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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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WAYS AND MEANS OF CHRISTIAN EN- 

DEAVOR. $1.25. 
THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH. 75 cents. 
DANGER SIGNALS. 75 cents. 

YOUNG PEOPLE'S PRAYER-MEETINGS. 75 cts. 
LOOKING OUT ON LIFE. 75 cents. 
OUR BUSINESS BOYS. 60 cents. 

D. LOTHROP COMPANY, 
364-366 Washington Street, Boston, 



LOOKING OUT ON LIFE. 



A BOOK FOR GIRLS 



ON PRACTICAL SUBJECTS BASED ON MANY LETTERS 
FROM WISE MOTHERS 



REV. F. E. "CLARK, D. D. 

President of the United Society of Christian Endeavor; Author 

of 11 The Mossback Correspondence" " Danger Signals" 

" Our Business Boys," " Ways and Means." 

" Young People's Prayer Meetings]" 1 

etc.. etc. 




BOSTON 

D LOTHROP COMPANY 

WASHINGTON STREET OPPOSITE BROMF1ELD 



\ 



Copyright, 1892. 

BY 

D. Lothrop Company. 



«< 



i 



©rtiicateti 

TO MY IDEAL OF A PERFECT WOMAN 

MY MOTHER 

WHO THIRTY-THREE YEARS AGO TO-DAY 
EXCHANGED EARTH FOR HEAVEN 



March 26, 1892. 



BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION. 



This book had its origin in a sincere desire to help the 
girls and young women of the present day to a nobler 
womanhood. If, after the manner of authors, any excuse 
is needed for presenting it to the public this jffirpose 
must be its sufficient apology. Not because girls are 
suffering for good advice is this book offered them, but 
because every generation needs to have the old truths that 
relate to the outlook on life put in fresh guise. 

The loving counsel of wise mothers and women eminent 
in public life which is here incorporated will, I believe, 
add a new interest to the themes discussed. However small 
the value of the author's own words, the importance of 
the messages of others of whom he is merely the mouth- 
piece, are beyond question. 

These chapters were originally given as lectures to an 
audience embracing hundreds of girls and young women, 
and the somewhat colloquial form of address has not been 
changed, as the author wishes to speak to the audience 
that reads his book rather than merely to write for them. 
Some parts of these chapters have also appeared in The 
Ladies' Home Journal of Philadelphia, and The Golden Bule 
of Boston. That in some cases they may be of service in 
bringing the Queen to her throne, her kingdom and her 
crown, is the hope and prayer of the author. 

F. E. C. 

Boston, March, 18i)2. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

A YOUNG WOMAN'S KIGHTS ... 7 

CHAPTER II. 

A YOUNG WOMAN'S WRONGS . . . 32 

CHAPTER III. 

ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS . . . . 58 

CHAPTER IV. 

FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION ... 84 

CHAPTER V. 

GETTING MARRIED 107 

CHAPTER VI. 

MOTHERS, SISTERS, DAUGHTERS . . . 129 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE QUEEN ON HER THRONE . . . 151 



LOOKING OUT ON LIFE. 



CHAPTER I. 

A YOUNG WOMAN'S EIGHTS. 

The Opinion of the Poets — Flattery and Calumny — 
Woman's right "to shave and sing bass" — The Bight 
to be Herself — Fashion's War on Individuality — In- 
dividuality not Oddity — A Girl's Capital — The Bight 
to Independence — The Spirit of Self-Help — A Young 
Woman's "Niche" — Intellectual Babies — Catching a 
Husband — Timothy Titcomb's Opinion — N P. Willis' 
Tribute to his Mother — A Young Woman's Noblest 
Bight. 

A S we glance through the poets, ancient 
-*--*- and modern, we are surprised to find 
the varying estimates that are put upon woman- 
kind by the minstrels of the ages. Some paint 

7 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 



her as an angel just come down from heaven, 
others as a tempting fiend just come up from 
the pit. Even the same poet — in different mood 
— has many a various estimate of her of whom 
he sings. Thus Byron in one poem describes 
one of his fair visions in words that many of us 
would apply to the woman — ■ mother, wife or 
sister — whom we loved best. 

" She walks in beauty, like the night 
Of cloudless climes and starry skies ; 

And all that's best of dark and bright, 
Meet in her aspect and her eyes." 

And in another one he declares : 



" What a strange thing is man ! and what a stranger 
Is woman ! What a whirlwind is her head 

And what a whirlpool full of depth and danger, 
Is all the rest about her." 



Lord Lansdown in heartless cynicism puts it 
this way : 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 9 

" Mankind from Adam, have been women's fools, 
Women, from Eve, have been the Devil's tools : 
Heaven might have spared one torment when we fell; 
Not left us women, or not threatened hell." 

While Charles McKay looking at the other side 
of the picture, writes : 

" Women may err, woman may give her mind 

To evil thoughts and lose her pure estate ; 
But for one woman who affronts her kind 

By wicked passions and remorseless hate, 
A thousand make amends in age and youth, 

By heavenly pity, by sweet sympathy, 
By patient kindness, by enduring truth, 

By love, supremest in adversity." 

Milton, as some one has before pointed out, 
in the ninth book of Paradise Lost, when first 
he realizes the enormity of Eve's transgression, 
cries out : 

" O fairest of creation, last and best 

Of all God's works, creature in whom excelled 

Whatever can to sight or thought be found, 

Holy, divine, good, amiable or sweet, 

How art thou lost! How on a sudden lost." 



10 A YOUNG WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 

And in the next book he, perceiving more and 
more his sin and hers, and their common fallen 
condition, exclaims: 

" Oh ! why did God create at last 
This novelty on earth, this fair defect 
Of nature, and not fill the world at once 
With men as angels, without feminine." 

These apparent contradictions of the poets 
are very suggestive and significant, for they 
show us the many-sidedness of her of whom 
they sing. The bard's keen vision sees the 
possibilities of a fiend or an angel, of a tormen- 
tor or an angel of light, of a tempting spirit or 
a messenger of God, in every woman. 

Not for the sake of speaking the usual words 
of flattery and the polite phrases which the sub- 
ject often calls forth would I take your time ; 
nor, on the other hand, would I waste it by re- 
peating the cutting sarcasm so often served up 
in one way or another which lash the supposed 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 11 

foibles of the sex ; but because there are in your 
keeping, young women, such vast opportunities, 
such princely fortunes, which you may either 
squander worse than recklessly, or use for the 
enrichment of the world, would I address you. 
Will you not give heed to these thoughts 
which, I pray, may do something toward build- 
ing up in each of you an earnest Christian 
womanhood ? 

In passing, and since we have been speaking of 
the poets' view, let us notice the change that, 
during the centuries, has come over the writers 
who have turned their attention to you (and 
there is scarcely one who has not done so). 
It is a most encouraging sign. Juvenal in- 
forms us that " there are few disputes in 
life which do not originate with a woman," 
and Plautus that "a woman finds it much 
easier to do ill than well," and that " women 
have many faults, but of the many this- is 
the greatest, that they please themselves too 



12 A YOUNG WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 

much and give too little attention to pleasing 
the men," and Virgil that " a woman is always 
changeable and capricious." These things are 
what heathen writers of greatest note had to 
say, and we find in them hardly a word of 
praise and honor. Cold, insinuating, heartless, 
vile words about womankind abound. But, 
thank God, Christianity has been at work in the 
world for eighteen hundred years, elevating and 
leavening, quickening and inspiring, and no 
class has so felt its touch as those whom you 
represent ; none should be so grateful as you 
that He whose mother was a Mary, and whose 
friends were the sisters of Bethany, made you 
as well as them His sisters and friends. As we 
read these cynical calumnies of heathen writers 
we feel what a wonderful change He has 
wrought who comforted the widow's heart at 
the gate of Nain, and raised the dead girl of 
Capernaum. Out of degradation worse than 
death has He raised womankind. The women 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 13 

of whom Tennyson and Longfellow sing are 
different creatures from the women of Virgil 
and Horace, because Christ lived and died. 
Now we feel that the words of our own Lowell 
are more true than those which heathen poet 
ever penned. 

" Earth's noblest thing a woman perfected." 
Now we feel the force of Barrett's verse : 



" Not she with trait'rous kiss her Saviour stung, 
Not she denied him with unholy tongue ; 
She, while Apostles shrank, could danger brave, 
Last at his cross and earliest at his grave." 



But we have not time to linger over the 
poets, ancient or modern, if we make even an 
unimportant contributor to the most important 
subject of a young woman's rights. I trust 
that no enthusiastic friend of the political rights 
of woman who may read these addresses, will 
be disappointed because I have nothing to say 



14 A YOUNG WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 

about the rights of women to vote and attend 
the caucus and hold office. Important as these 
questions are, I believe that there are other 
rights that belong inherently and unquestion- 
ably to every young woman, which are more 
important still, and which are far more often 
overlooked. Dr. Holland in a half-bantering, 
yet in its purpose wholly serious lecture about 
women, stands up stoutly for a woman's right 
to shave and sing bass if she wants to do so ; 
" but," he adds, " while I claim the right of 
every woman to* sing bass, I confess that I 
should not care to see it exercised to any great 
extent, for I think treble is by all odds the finer 
and more attractive part of music. 

" Bass would be a bad thing for a lullaby, and 
could only silence a baby by scaring it. If I 
can witch the ears and win the hearts of men 
and women by doing that which I can do 
naturalty and well, then I shall do best not to 
exercise my right to do that which I can only 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 15 

do with difficulty and unnaturally and ill. . . 

. I will admit all the rights that any such 
woman claims — all that I myself possess — if 
she will let me alone^ and keep her distance from 
me. She may sing bass, but I do not wish to 
hear her." And this leads us naturally to the 
first right of a young woman which I would 
ask you to insist on — namely, the right to be 
herself. Have an individuality of your own ; 
be all that God meant you should be. Let no 
sentiment or fashion rob you of this right. 

It is an inalienable one, and it is worth more 
to you than the ballot box and the caucus. 
There is just one person in the world who has 
your work to do, and she is called by your name. 
There is one place that no one of the millions 
of young women of America can fill except 
yourself. You can, to be sure, so dwarf and 
stunt yourselves that you may fill no useful 
place, but it will not be God's fault or nature's 
fault. You have every natural aptitude needed. 



16 A YOUNG WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 

Whatever your voice, treble or alto, cracked or 
musical, there is a melody in some life which 
you can best awaken. But to do this you must 
be yourself, and not try to be a weak imitation 
of ten thousand others. It strikes me that this 
is one of the rights which the young woman of 
the present day is all too unwilling to insist 
upon. She always seems to be afraid of her own 
individuality. She must follow the prevailing 
fashion if it takes the last dollar out of her 
pocket, and the last ounce of strength out of 
her life. If bangs are the fashion, she is at 
once banged ; if frizzles are in vogue, she must 
at once be frizzled. If flounces are the things 
that other girls wear, then there is only one 
thing that she can wear ; and she hides herself 
under a Gainsborough hat or envelopes herself 
in a sugar scoop, according as the Gainsborough 
or the sugar scoop is the mode. Why, I have 
more respect for Mary Walker in her bloomers 
than I have for some fashionable girls, whose 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 17 

sole idea is to make dressmakers' dummies of 
themselves. 

Not that I have any quarrel with bangs or 
frizzles or flounces or Gainsboroughs (all these 
things are enveloped in too deep a mystery for 
the average man to understand them), but I 
have a quarrel with that for which they often 
stand — the total lack of individuality and 
appreciation of life's mission. Of this these 
things often tell. 

We have some patience with the sheep that 
jumps through a gap in the wall simply because 
another sheep has done the same thing, though 
it would be much easier to go another way by 
itself, but we expect more of a young woman 
than of a South-Down. Our Lord's question 
implies that she is better than a sheep. 

I would not have you understand that I mean 
by individuality something odd and outre, or 
pert and perverse. To be one's self is to be just 
what nature intended, nothing more, certainly 



18 A YOUNG WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 

nothing less. It is not to strain after oddi- 
ties and quiddities, nor is it to copy slavishly 
some other person's oddities. It is not to bend 
over backwards because others stoop forward, 
nor is it to cultivate the Grecian bend because 
the leader of French society happens to have a 
crook in her back. It is not to try to sing bass 
because most other girls sing treble, nor is it to 
try to sing treble simply because others do, when 
nature has given you an alto voice. In fact, it 
seems to me that Mary Walker and her ilk and 
the butterflies of fashion who always paint 
themselves with the same spots that other 
butterflies affect, are all committing the same 
mistake — all are trying to be what God and 
nature did not intend they should be, one party 
because they wish to be different from the rest 
of the world, and the other because they cannot 
bear to be different. If God has given you a 
witty tongue and lively imagination, use them, 
but do not try to ape the wit of some one else. 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 19 

If your place is among the leaders of your set, 
do not fail to fill it, but if it is in the rank and 
file, remember that in fighting the battles of life 
as well as of the country, the private is needed 
as well as the general, and do not envy his 
glittering epaulets. In fact, we need a great 
many more privates than generals. There are 
a thousand men in every regiment and only 
one colonel. 

Remember, too, that the private soldier stands 
by himself ; that he cannot do the general's 
work, but he must do his own. If your capital 
in life is only a pleasant smile, a soft voice, a 
bright face, a winning manner, and none to 
whom I speak have less, use them, every one, 
and use all you have, but use your own. Do 
not try to acquire the smile and voice and 
manner of some one else. If you do you w r ill 
simper instead of smile, you will make eyes 
instead of shooting dangerous glances, and you 
will really repel when you intend to attract. 



20 A YOUNG WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 

I 

In short, insist on your personal, God-given 
right to be yourself. 

Another of your rights which, I hope, you 
will all insist upon, a right which is worth far 
more than your right to shave and sing bass, is 
your right to be self-reliant and in the best 
sense of the term, independent. 

I know that it is often said that woman 
should be like the vine, lithe and flexible, twin- 
ing around the masculine oak, covering up his 
defects and gracing his gnarled branches. I 
think this vine and oak simile has been over- 
done, but, admitting its force — and it has 
much force- — let us remember that there is a 
vast difference between a healthy vine and a 
parasitic creeper. 

The vine flourishes wherever it is planted, 
and graces a wooden trellis or the blank side of 
a house as well as the living tree. It has its 
own roots in the ground, is fed by the sap 
which it collects for itself, and bears its own 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 21 

fruit. The parasite always feeds on the life of 
that against which it leans. It is nourished 
only by the sap of the stronger plant ; it uses 
the roots and leaves of the stronger plant to 
furnish it food ; it has no independent life of 
its own ; it bears no fruit in itself ; it dimin- 
ishes the yield of that which supports it; in 
short, it is always a weakness and a nuisance ; 
it serves no purpose except the ornamental, 
and, when we know its true nature and 
character, it loses its doubtful claim to beauty. 

This, then, is what I mean to urge when I 
say insist on your right to be self-reliant and 
independent. Be a vine if you will, but do not 
be a parasite. Cling to a stronger nature by a 
thousand delicate tendrils, but have a root of 
your own, bear fruit of your own, do not sap 
the life of another to keep yourself alive. Have 
some other mission than the very equivocal one 
of being merely ornamental. The*!, if the sup- 
port on which you lean and around which your 



22 A YOUNG WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 

affections twine, fails, as fail it often does, you 
will not be torn up by the roots, but will be 
able, like the oak-tree itself, to live a useful, 
fruit-bearing life. I have many wise words to 
bring you upon this point from those who have 
kindly interested themselves in your welfare. 
I cannot begin to quote them all, but let me 
give you some. 

One whose name is a household word in two 
continents by reason of her labors in the tem- 
perance cause, writes as follows : 

" The point that most needs strengthening in a young 
woman's character is a noble, cheery, helpful spirit of self- 
help. The individualism of Christ's gospel needs devel- 
opment and application among our girls, and will enable 
them to save themselves and the republic." 

Another, also well known, and well loved 
wherever known, writes : 

" Self-reliance is a point of character to be emphasized. 
Marriage is the natural and, in some cases, the desirable 



A YOUNG WOMAN S KIGHTS. 23 

and blessed ultimate; but I take it that the girls best 
qualified to enter this holy estate and bravely meet its 
duties and responsibilities are those for whom marriage 
was not the one aim of existence — who had a life to live 
outside 01 this — a plan of life it may be, at all events an 
earnest purpose." 

Another, an eminent educator, whose daily 
life influences for good each day many young 
women, writes : 

" One way to strengthen character in young women, I 
think, is to make them realize that life is real, and that 
they have a niche to fill somewhere, and that it is their 
business to be faithful in the performance of every little 
duty as it comes to them. Many a house would be in deep 
distress if the daughter who thinks she does nothing, but 
who fills in all the little insignificant places, was taken 
from it." 

How true that is ! but such a daughter is 
never a parasite, however gentle and clinging 
and unobtrusive she is ; she is a fruitful vine, 
with a root of her own. 

"What I think needs strengthening in the 



24 A YOUNG WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 

young women," writes another, " is decision of 
character. A strong determination to please 
God, to know the right and to do it, regardless 
of the opinion of the world." 

"It sometimes seems to me," are the wise 

words of another, " that we are bringing up a set 

* 

of intellectual babies — if I may use such an ex- 
pression — utterly without self-reliance ; unable 
to think for themselves or depend upon them- 
selves. Life is made too easy — too smooth sail- 
ing ; when the time of decision comes, the girls 
are frightened or indifferent, and continue to do 
the easiest thing — to drift with the current." 

We must revolutionize our whole notions 
that a young woman has nothing to do but to 
angle for and catch a husband. Fishing is 
good for a recreation, but it is not well for too 
many to take it up as the serious and only busi- 
ness of life. There is much poetry surrounding 
the rippling trout-stream on the summer morn- 
ing, with the whispering woods and glimpses of 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 25 

blue sky overhead, and the romantic vistas of 
forest before and behind, but I imagine that the 
poor fellows on the Grand Banks who do 
nothing but fish for a living, find it dreary and 
often hopeless and unproductive toil. I am very 
sure that young women who have no resources 
within themselves, no independence of charac- 
ter, and no other means of employment except 
fishing for a husband in the whirlpool of societ}^, 
must often be miserable and heart-broken. If 
they make this their sole business in life, too, 
they do not often succeed very well, but, while 
hoping to hook a leviathan, they often catch a 
gudgeon or a very small sprat. 

Timothy Titcomb has some wise advice on 
this point. He says : 

"Were I as rich as Croesus, my girls should have 
something to clo regularly, just as soon as they should 
become old enough to do anything. ... A woman 
helpless from any other cause than sickness is essentially 
a nuisance. There is nothing womanly and ladylike in 
helplessness. . . . Young woman, the glory of your 



26 A YOUNG WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 

life is to do something and be something. If you have 
the slightest desire to be loved; if you would be admired, 
respected, revered; if you would have all sweet, human 
sympathies clustering around you, while you live, and the 
tears of a multitude of friends shed upon your grave when 
you die, you must be a working woman — living and 
working for others, and building up for yourself a 
character, strong, symmetrical, beautiful." 

Thus you will show the world the true love- 
liness of woman's nature. Thus you will — 

" Show us how divine a thing 
A woman may be made." 

" Each young lady has a specialty," writes to 
me one of your friends. " What is it ? M You 
think at once of painting, music, embroidery, 
or some of those nameless and wonderful things 
that are done with worsted and plenty of time. 
These things are well enough in their way, if 
there is talent and time for them at your dispo- 
sal ; but there is one specialty in which you all 
have the right to indulge. Nature fitted you 
for this specialty, God designed you for it, your 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 27 

own souls will never be satisfied unless you 
show the loveliness and divinely modest self- 
forgetfulness of a true woman's nature. 

" You can lighten your father's burdens," it 
has been well said. " You can restrain your 
brothers from vicious society. You can relieve 
your failing and faded mother of much care. 
You can gather the ragged and ignorant chil- 
dren at your knee and teach them something of 
a better life than they have seen. You can 
become angels of light and goodness to many 
stricken hearts. You can read to the aged. 
You can do many things that will be changed 
to blessings upon your own soul. Florence 
Nightingale did her work in her own place ; do 
your work in yours, and your Father, who 
seeth in secret, shall reward you openly." 

This chapter must not be closed without 
calling attention to the greatest glory and orna- 
ment of womanly character as it is of manly 
character — Christlikeness. There is no one 



28 A YOUNG WOMAN'S EIGHTS. 

word that expresses so much. Leave out this 
element and the chief charm is gone, the rose 
is despoiled of its fragrance, the crown has lost 
its purest gem. A well-known writer has ex- 
pressed himself none too strongly when he says 
of the godless woman : 

" There seems to be no light in her — no glory proceed- 
ing from her. There is something monstrous about an 
utterly godless woman. She is an unreasonable woman. 
She is an offensive woman. Even an utterly godless man, 
unless he be debauched and debased to the position of an 
animal, deems such a woman without excuse. He looks 
on her with suspicion. He would not have such a one 
take care of his children. He would not trust her. . . 

. The boy that feels that his name is mentioned in a 
good mother's prayers, is comparatively safe from vice 
and the ruin to which it leads. The sweetest thought 
that N. P. Willis ever penned grew out of a reference to 
his pious mother's prayers for him. Tossed by the waves 
in a vessel which was bearing him homeward, he wrote : 

" ' Sleep safe, O wave-worn mariner, 
Nor fear to-night, nor storm, nor sea! 

The ear of Heaven bends low to her, 
He comes to show who sails with me.' " 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 29 

For a moment before I close this subject let 
me call your attention to the fact that your 
highest right, young women, is also your high- 
est privilege. To you more than to any one 
class is committed the future of the kingdom of 
God. 

Our churches are made up of women in the 
proportion of three to one. Many of these 
are young women. Each one has not only her 
own influence to exert, but ver}^ largely decides 
what the life of some father, brother, son or 
lover shall be ; whether it shall be a godlj- or a 
godless life. 

Your highest right to show the beauty of 
Christliness is also your highest privilege and 
heaviest responsibility. By you and such as 
you the kingdom of God may be established in 
all the land and for all time. Let me tell you 
an old story that has a lesson for every one of 
you. 

In a newly settled region of our land some 



30 A YOUNG WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 

men were raising the heavy frame-work of a 
mill. The united strength of all the men in 
the community was called into action. They 
raised the heavy frame-work part way, but 
could get it no further. Their utmost exertion 
could not raise it another inch. They could 
not let go or it w T ould crush them. Their fail- 
ing strength could not hold it where it was 
much longer. In their extremity a messenger 
was sent for the women of the little village. 
In urgent haste they flocked to the scene. A 
little stream flowed between them and the mill. 
" Don't mind the water, come and help us," cried 
the fathers and brothers. They dashed through 
the stream, they stood beside the men, they 
lifted with all their might, and the timbers rose 
upright and fitted into their place, and all were 
safe. 

I believe this little story is prophetic. The 
Temple of the Kingdom of God is being raised, 
but all must lend a willing hand inspired by a 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 31 

loving heart. The women are grandly coming 
to the front — in temperance effort, in church 
life, in Christian Endeavor Societies, in Sunday- 
school work, and above all by the uplifting in- 
fluences of a lovely, chaste, Christian example, 
the building is being reared and the capstone 
will surely be laid in God's good time. 

Have you a part in this good work ? Are 
you lending your heart and word and influence 
to the cause of Christ, for God and home and 
native land ? 

To do this is a young woman's noblest right. 



CHAPTER II. 

A YOUNG WOMAN'S WRONGS. 



What shall we do with Our Daughters? — The Coming 
Woman — Openings for Women — Some Imaginary Wrongs 
— Self- Inflicted Wrongs — An Inordinate Love of Imagin- 
ation — The Art of Pleasing — Love of Dress — TJie 
Peacock Girl — Keeping up Appearances — Narrow Views 
of Life — The Woman and the Poodle — Living up to 
their Blue China — What your Sisters have Done — TJie 
Consecrated Life, 



A S a young woman's most important rights 
-*--*- are those which nature has conferred 
upon her, or which every young woman may 
hope to attain, so her deepest, deadliest wrongs 
are not those which man has inflicted upon her, 
or which any real or supposed disadvantage of 
sex has made inevitable, but they are wrongs 

32 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S WRONGS. 33 

which she voluntarily inflicts upon herself. As 
her highest right is to be herself, to be " a per- 
fect woman, nobly planned," to be all that God 
intended, self-reliant, self-forgetful and above 
all truly Christian, so her greatest wrong is a 
degradation and lowering of her nature which 
makes her less than she may be, less than God 
intended she should be. I admit that in the 
past, woman has not always had a fair chance, 
she has not had all her rights accorded her. 
She has been treated sometimes as the slave, 
and sometimes as the toy of man. 

Even now, in some respects, I do not think 
she is treated altogether fairly. She does not 
always receive as much pay for the same work 
as a man would receive. It is a harder struggle 
oftentimes for her to mount the ladder of busi- 
ness or professional success, but, thank God, all 
these unfair distinctions are passing away. In 
other respects her rights and immunities and 
privileges are greater than of the most favored 



34 A YOUNG WOMAN'S WRONGS. 

man, and the unjust inequalities are being 
leveled so fast that we hardly need to consider 
them in comparison with the deadlier wrongs 
which a young woman may almost uncon- 
sciously inflict upon herself. Mrs. Mary A. 
Livermore, in her valuable book entitled, " What 
shall we do with our Daughters? " notes and ad- 
mits this glorious change which has been taking 
place in the outward condition of mankind, so 
frankly and finely, that I must quote a few 
sentences. 

Speaking of a book of Margaret Fuller's 
which, forty years ago, attracted her attention, 
she mentions two mottoes at the head of the 
opening chapter; one underneath the other, 
one contradicting the other. 

" The first was an old-time adage, indorsed 
by Shakespeare, believed in by the world, and 
quoted in that day very generally. It is not 
yet entirely obsolete : 

" * Frailty, thy name is woman.' 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S WRONGS. 35 

" Underneath it, and unlike it was the other : 
" * The Earth waits for her Queen.' 

" The first describes woman as she has been 
understood in the past; as she masqueraded in 
history ; as she has been made to figure in 
literature, as she has, in a certain sense, existed. 

" The other prophesied that grander type of 
woman, toward which, to-day, the whole sex is 
moving — consciously or unconsciously, will- 
ingly or unwillingly — because the current sets 
that way, and there is no escape from it. 

" The hope of many is so centered in the 
4 coming man,' that the only questions of inter- 
est to them are those propounded by James 
Parton in the Atlantic Monthly: 'Will the 
coming man smoke ? ' c Will he drink wine ? ' 
and so on to the end of the catechism. But let 
it not be forgotten that before this ' coming 
man ' will make his appearance, his mother will 



36 A YOUNG WOMAN'S WRONGS. 

precede him, and that he will be very largely 

what his mother will make him." 

This question of the legal and social wrongs 

of womankind is one that we can safely dismiss 

as either already solved or so far on the way to 

solution that it need not greatly trouble us. 

As far as the laws of men stand in the way, you 

i- 

can be just about what you want to be, young 
women. 

If you desire an education, you can get as 
good a one at Smith or Wellesley or Vassar as 
your brothers can get at Amherst or Dartmouth 
or Williams. If you have artistic tastes there is 
no picture or sculpture gallery in the world 
that will reject your productions because you 
are a woman. If you are of a literary turn, 
the magazines and the- publishers will take a 
good thing from you, and pay you as much for 
it as if you were a man. Charles Egbert 
Craddock became at once twice the lion she was 
before, when it was found that she was an 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S WRONGS. 37 

attractive young woman, instead of, as had 
been supposed, a merely masculine product of 
the Tennessee mountains. 

To be sure, there are some kinds of business 
from which you are still debarred. You would 
hardly find it easy to obtain a situation as 
horse-car driver or coal-heaver or blacksmith; 
but I do not suppose you greatly hanker after 
such positions ; at any rate, you have an equal 
advantage of the other sex, since, for the 
most part, men are excluded from dressmakers' 
establishments and sick rooms, where the gentle 
hand and light foot of a nurse are required. 

No, you need not groan over any imaginary 
wrongs in this year of grace. Whatever may 
have been true in the past, you, like your 
brother, may be the architect of your own 
fortune to-day. 

Your wrongs, like his, are those which you 
will inflict upon yourself. Let me faithfully 
call your attention to some of these. 



38 A YOUNG WOMAN'S WKONGS. 

The first of a young woman's wrongs that I 
would mention is an inordinate love of admira- 
tion. This wrong is one of woman's rights 
perverted, to be sure, but it nevertheless 
becomes one of her chief wrongs, just as most 
of the evils of the world are perverted virtues. 

A young man is not under the dominion of 
this perverted right to the same extent by any 
means. He very early finds that his success in 
the world depends upon sterling qualities of 
heart and brain, and not upon his good looks 
or upon his powers of cajolery or flattery, or 
his ability to excite admiration. 

He finds that the boy from the country, with 
the cowhide boots and homespun jacket and un- 
couth manners, if he has integrity, good habits 
and a strong will on his side, is far more likely 
to succeed than the city-bred boy who lacks 
these qualities. The dude, with his arms 
akimbo, and ivory-headed cane, even if he 
plasters his hair upon his forehead in the most 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S WRONGS. 39 

approved style, finds very soon that these graces 
are not the open sesame of business prosperity ; 
and the rougher, sterner, more manly virtues 
are thus often developed at the expense of the 
gentleman. But with the girl it is different. 
She finds that she can wheedle an extra five 
dollars out of her father's pocket by looking 
pretty and with hug and kiss and coaxing 
manner more easily than in any other way. As 
she grows older she finds that these same bland- 
ishments — many of them exceedingly super- 
ficial — are her chief stock in trade. Personal 
attractions command a premium, while real, 
sterling worth of heart or brain fall below par, 
and very soon efforts to catch the passing 
applause of an admiring glance absorb all the 
attention. 

I am very far from implying that the 
proper desire to please and attract is not most 
praiseworthy. The message which one of your 
friends sends to you through me is very true : 



40 A YOUNG WOMAN'S WRONGS. 

* * A great art is the art of pleasing. Let a young woman 
be lavish of her gifts and graces in this direction. Let 
her use all her wit and fascination in voice, manner and 
dress to please, that she may elevate and regenerate not 
society only, but the home." 

But, when we have said all this, it still 
remains true that this pleasant road, if pursued 
too far, runs always into a trap and snare. 

" One danger that seems to belong especially 
to girls, and which attracts them in childhood, 
is the love of flattery,'' writes one, " and higher 
praise than they earn for every little thing 
they do. 

" When this is withheld, or a reproof admin- 
istered for neglect of duties, a flood of tears 
is apt to be the immediate result, and a general 
inability to meet the stern realities of life the 
ultimate result." 

" One of the greatest dangers lying in the 
path of a young woman," writes another, " is 
the great desire to obtain the approbation of 
the world. How often she seeks to have her 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S WRONGS. 41 

vanity gratified by trying to excel in worldly 
affairs ! " 

And just here we come very close to a wrong 
that is more specific and more wide-spread 
than almost any other ; the inordinate love of 
admiration as indicated by the undue attention 
to dress. It is a subject which a man may well 
hesitate to attack, and had I simply my own 
words to bring I should certainly hesitate long 
before speaking; but scores of warnings have 
been sent me for you on this point, and, after 
what your mothers and teachers have written, I 
cannot but feel that it is a most important 
matter. 

We are not anchorites and we believe in no 
sumptuary laws to regulate the cut of your 
gown or the color of the ribbons in your bon- 
net, and I am sure that all your friends would 
agree with me when I say that it is a j 7 oung 
woman's duty to dress attractively and as well 
as she can afford ; but we also believe that there 



42 A YOUNG woman's wkongs. 

is something of vastly more importance than 
the cut of your gown and the color of your 
bonnet strings. You are committing a grievous 
wrong to a nature that was meant to be angelic, 
nay, rather godlike, when you center all atten- 
tion on the feathers that bedeck and on the 
flounces that will go out of fashion to-morrow. 

To seek admiration in this way only, is the 
surest way in the long run to lose respect and 
love. 

The peacock can spread the most gorgeous 
tail of any bird I know, but, as he goes strutting 
about, endeavoring to display every individual 
feather, he excites laughter rather than admira- 
tion, while the modest little native sparrow in 
delicate, unobtrusive suit of homely brown we 
love and rejoice in, as he pours forth his song, 
so full of springtime melody. 

Let me quote a few of the messages that have 
come to you on this point. Says one : 

" I think I never go about the stores of Bos- 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S WEONGS. 43 

ton without being distressed at seeing girls of 
moderate circumstances (judging by appear- 
ances) hanging about counters where are dis- 
played the elegant laces, satins and velvets, for 
the reason that not more than one girl out of a 
hundred can afford to wear such costumes. I 
think the same thing is shown in that we con- 
stantly see behind counters and in the street, 
young women wearing velveteen and tawdry 
jewelry, where the same money would buy soft 
cloths which would be more ladylike and 
appropriate." 

" First among the dangers," writes another, 
" I should put inordinate love of dress. I per- 
sonally know some who curtail their charities 
and more who go without suitable food that 
they may be as well dressed as their neighbors, 
and I very much fear that in many cases temp- 
tation assumes a darker guise." 

Another faithful Sabbath school teacher 
writes : 



44 A YOUNG WOMN^S WRONGS. 

" In my own class in Sunday school one of 
my great troubles spring, summer, autumn and 
winter, has been to make the girls forget their 
new clothes. I have always been thankful when 
the season of new clothes was over, for lessons 
were at a discount until the new clothes had 
been inspected. So many, too, buy poor, cheap 
stuff that won't last, and make it up in some 
flashy kind of a way, simply that they may look 
stylish. Style is enough to spoil any girl." 

Here are some stirring words : 

" One great danger is an overpowering desire 
to keep up appearances, prompting to wrong 
doing. 

u In one of the largest dry goods stores in 
Boston is a young lady clerk who receives but 
five dollars per week. She is pretty and enjoys 
society. What then? Every cent of the five 
dollars goes to pay for room and food ; cloth- 
ing is supplied by a good father living in 
the country who would be glad to have his 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S WRONGS. 45 

daughter at home, but she likes the stir of Bos- 
ton. She is led by her love of display to flatter 
her friends — ladies and gentlemen — that they 
may invite her to entertainments and give her 
pretty things to wear. Her acquaintances out- 
side of Boston are led to believe that she has a 
very lucrative position. The result of her de- 
sire to appear better off than she is, is a lower- 
ing of her standard of moral right leading to 
flattery and deception." 

I have time for but one more message : 
" In my opinion the great, even almost absorb- 
ing love of dress and display which young 
women cherish, and the time given for the minis- 
tering to their personal vanity, leads very many 
into recklessness and heartlessness, and to an 
utter distaste for the things which would profit 
their spiritual, intellectual and moral nature. 
This love for showy raiment and straining for 
its effect leads very many into some pitfall of 
immorality." 



46 A YOUNG WOMAN'S WRONGS. 

I believe that there is a world of truth in this 
last sentence. I have talked with some who 
know the seamy side of a great city's street life 
and they all assure me that love of dress has 
thousands of victims in the brothels, or among 
the street walkers of every large city. " What 
brought you here ? " we ask of the degraded, 
fallen man ; and in nine cases out of ten the re- 
ply would be " Rum did it." " What brought 
you here ? " Ask this of his companion, the 
degraded, fallen woman, and almost as often the 
answer would come back: "Dress did it; love 
of finery, the gewgaw, the ribbon, the flash jew- 
elry, the desire to keep up appearances did it. 
That took me the first step toward dishonor, 
and the rest came easy." 

And this leads us naturally to another wrong 
which I fear some of you are likely to inflict 
upon yourselves and that is the tendency to 
narrowness and very contracted views of life 
and duty. You naturally live more within four 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S WRONGS. 47 

walls than your brothers, but do not let those 
four walls bound all your horizon. It is un- 
doubtedly of the utmost importance whether 
this piece of ribbon matches your complexion, 
but there are matters of greater importance. 

I have read of a young woman that spent 
two hundred days in learning to paint a carrot 
to hang upon the wall, and, if that carrot was 
painted well, it was a noble work compared 
with that which engrosses some lives. The 
story of the dry-as-dust professor who spent all 
his life in studying the Greek particle, and 
when he died regretted that he had chosen such 
a wide field of study, instead of confining his 
attention to the dative case was an old favorite 
in college. While it seems to be generally un- 
derstood that a man's aim in life is to subdue 
continents and build cities and conquer armies, 
a woman's chief end, as some look upon it, is to 
make tatting. 

I sometimes see a lady of fashion and wealth 



48 A YOUNG WOMAN'S WRONGS. 

who seems to spend all her time over the poodle 
dog that rides by her side in the elegant car- 
riage. *It is dressed and washed and combed 
and takes its airing as regularly as the lady 
herself, while there are thousands of immortal 
children perishing for lack of just this care ; 
and I sometimes wonder as I see the two, the 
woman and the poodle, sitting together — I won- 
der which has the widest outlook upon life. 
Some women seem to think that a large, gen- 
erous outlook upon life is almost unwomanly. 
They hardly know who the president of the 
United States is, or who is the governor of their 
own commonwealth, and, as to such exciting 
events as have been taking place of late on the 
other side of the water, they are all rubbish to 
them. An interest in politics is considered 
mannish and unnatural, while to read Shakes- 
peare, or study political economy, or to be 
versed in science is thought to savor of the 
bluestocking. All knowledge is open to you. 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S WRONGS. 49 

If you do dwell within four walls most of your 
life, the best books and the highest, broadest 
life may come there, and dwell forever. 

Remember that first of all you are a human 
being, and that you have all the rights of a 
human being; that you are a woman second- 
arily. Remember that you will live as long, 
that you have as precious a soul to save, as mo- 
mentous questions to face, as any hero or heroine 
who ever lived. 

" Little girls," says Frances Power Cobbe in 
her most admirable book on the Duties of 
Women, "little girls may fitly play with toys 
and dress dolls, and chatter in the nursery for 
hours over some weighty concern of the baby 
house ; but it is a pitiful sight to see grown 
women making all life a child's play. Rise, I 
pray you, to the true dignity of a human being, 
to whom petty feelings and small vanities and 
servile, wheedling tricks must be repugnant 
and abominable/' 



50 A YOUNG WOMAN'S WRONGS. 

The dialogue over a China teapot, which 
Constance Cary Harrison puts into the mouths 
of two of her characters, points most wittily the 
moral I would teach. " Is it not consummate ? " 
asks the husband. "It is indeed. O, Alger- 
non ! do let us try to live up to it," responds 
the wife. Some women and men too, for that 
matter, have nothing nobler to live up to than 
a China teapot with a crack in it. It is one 
great danger of the modern life of women, 
whether they are rich or poor, that some such 
small, dwarfing ambition may be the goal of life. 
This age without much cynicism might be 
called the age of bric-a-brac, the age of expen- 
sive tidies and costly nothings — things well 
enough in their way, but not large enough to 
fill the soul. Oh! remember that there is some- 
thing better to live up to than cracked china 
and yellow lace and the last waltz or polka, or 
the latest crochet stitch. Nothing but God can 
fill the soul. 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S WRONGS. 51 

Will it not help you in realizing this high 
ideal to remember what your sisters have been 
and done and dared ? It has been well said 
that in every walk of life we should think of 
those who have most honored that particular 
station, and catch the inspiration of their lives. 
Thus the slave may proudly exclaim, " Frederick 
Douglas was a slave," the blacksmith may cry, 
"Elihu Burrett was a blacksmith," the shoe- 
maker, as he plies his awl, may remember that 
William Carey and Admiral Shovel and J. G. 
Whittier were shoemakers. 

Every woman may remember that as heroic, 
steadfast blood as ever flowed, has flowed in 
woman's veins. As high aims, as noble pur- 
poses as ever actuated human souls have in- 
spired the breasts of women. If you are of a 
literary turn and desire to have a name in 
letters, do not be disheartened, but remember 
Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot were 
women. If you would be an artist, strive not 



52 A YOUNG WOMAN'S WRONGS. 

for mediocrity, but for the highest place, re- 
membering Rosa Bonheur and Harriet Hosmer 
are women. If you love to study the works 
and plans of God's universe, remember that the 
gates of science are no more closed to you than 
to your brothers, for Caroline Herschel and 
Maria Mitchell were women. 

Does your heart burn with philanthropic zeal 
to do great things for your day and generation ? 
The way is fully open. You have not to blaze 
an unknown path, for Florence Nightingale 
and Dorothea Dix and Sister Dora were women. 

Do you feel within you the strivings of the 
spirit to do and dare great things for God? 
Just so has he striven with others who nobly 
yielded themselves and chose nothing less than 
God. Perpetua and Felicitas were women, 
and yet they, in the public arena, flinched not, 
nor denied their Lord by word or sign, when 
placed in the swinging net, to be gored to 
pieces by wild bulls. 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S WRONGS. 53 

Or is it in the quiet home circle that you find 
your mission ? Most of you, I trust, will find 
your life-work there, for it is a life no less really 
rich and full than the life of the artist, philan- 
thropist and heroine. Is it your mission to cheer 
the aged father, to comfort the weary mother, 
to share a husband's cares or steady a baby's 
first, timid step ? I hope it may be for most of 
you. 

Then remember that ten thousand times ten 
thousand women who have been before you, 
have set the pattern of noble, modest woman- 
hood, full, symmetrical and well-rounded as 
any man's could be. 

Let me recall to your mind the familiar 
words of the noble wife of a noble president. 
Thus wrote Mrs. Garfield, ten years before her 
husband thought of being president : 

"lam glad to tell that out of the toil and disappoint- 
ment of the summer just ended, I have risen up to a 
victory. 



54 A YOUNG WOMAN'S WRONGS. 

" I read something like this the other clay : ' There is no 
healthy thought without labor, and thought makes labor 
happy.' Perhaps this is the way I have been able to 
climb up higher. It came to me one morning when I was 
making bread. I said to myself : ' Here I am compelled 
to make our bread this summer. Why not consider it a 
pleasant occupation, and make it so by trying to see what 
perfect bread I can make? ' It seemed like an inspiration, 
and the whole of life grew brighter. The very sunshine 
seemed to be flowing clown through my spirits into the 
white loaves, and now I believe my table is furnished with 
better bread than ever before. And this old truth, old as 
creation, seems just now to have become fully mine — 
that I need not be the slave of toil, but its regal master, 
making whatever I do yield me its best fruits." 

There spoke out the true, large-souled woman. 
Just as noble, just as honorable as the good 
breadmaker, as when she became the good 
president's wife. 

I must dwell very briefly on my last point — 
the deadliest wrong you can inflict upon your- 
selves is to allow your souls to be corroded with 
the spirit of worldliness. 

There is nothing so foreign to a true woman's 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S WRONGS. 55 

nature as worldliness, godlessness. In a man 
it is unnatural, hardening and debasing ; in a 
woman it is atrocious and horrible. As much 
as her finer nature raises her nearer the angels, 
so the deadening and blunting of this nature 
brings her nearer the devils than a man often 
falls. 

" I feel very keenly," writes one, " that 
even among some of our Christian girls there 
seems to be such an utterly indifferent attitude 
to a thoroughly consecrated life. They like to 
keep just as near the border as they can, so that 
their associates will not suspect they are trying 
to lead a Christian life." 

"Indecision in religious matters, hesitancy, 
want of singleness of aim, a desire to serve God 
and Mammon, a desire to make reservation," 
says another, " is one evil that girls, even 
Christian girls, are prone to." 

O, young women ! would that some word of 
mine might show you how a whole-hearted con- 



56 A YOUNG WOMAN'S WRONGS. 

secration to Christ glorifies and ennobles your 
treasure of womanhood. It does for the jewel of 
your life what the lapidary does for the rough, 
unsightly stone from the diamond mine ; it makes 
it glow with a heavenly light. There is nothing 
so distorted, and perverted, and deformed, as a 
godless womanhood ; there is nothing so beauti- 
ful and precious as a godly womanhood. 

If you care not for the redemption of your 
own soul, remember the other lives which your 
loss may involve. We mourn a disaster to a 
great ocean steamer, because so many millions 
of treasure were wasted, and because a thou- 
sand lives were imperiled. Let every godless 
woman remember, if she cares not for her own 
distinction, that she imperils with herself a 
thousand other lives. If the deadly waters of 
worldliness and godlessness leak in, the fires of 
love, of home affection, of wifely and motherly 
devotion, will slowly but surely be extinguished ; 
the precious cargo of peace and good will and 



A YOUNG WOMAN'S WRONGS. 57 

modest, unselfish care for others, with which 
every true womanly life is freighted, and with- 
out which the world would be far poorer, will 
be lost, and a thousand lives, of those yet un- 
born, down to the third and fourth generation, 
will be imperiled. 



CHAPTER III. 

ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. 

Superfluous Women — Prince Charming' 's Advent — The 
Fancy-work Girl — The Tendency to " Drift " — A Moral 
Backbone — Busyness which is not Business — Accom- 
plishments and Accomplishments — Aimlessness is Coward- 
ice — The Mouse as a test of Character — Weak Nerves 
no boon to the Human Bace — Courage not alone a Manly 
Virtue — Pare Men and Courageous Women — Semi- 
Invalidism — Bomantic Sickness — The Fuel that feeds 
the Fires of a Wasted Life — Christian Womanhood. 

^ T I iHE anxious and aimless." Such, I 
-*- believe, were the epithets applied by- 
one of the former governors of Massachusetts 
to the seventy thousand so-called superfluous 
women of Massachusetts, whom he advised to 
find a mission and a use for life by emigrating 

58 



ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. 59 

to the West. I believe that these words contain 
a libel on the vast majority of the sex. I 
do not think there are any more superfluous 
women than men. Most of you, I am very 
sure, are not anxious or aimless, but, because 
these words point out a frequent and prolific 
source of danger, and because I want you all to 
prove them more and more libellous and untrue, 
I wish to dwell upon them in this chapter. 
Your brother meets his temptations in the 
street and in the market, they are the tempta- 
tions of active life ; yours come from the very 
quietness and lack of stir in your lives, lives 
which are apt to degenerate into weak aimless- 
ness, a passive drifting with the current, which 
is supposed to bear every woman on to the 
harbor of matrimony, but which, if they allow 
themselves simply to drift, often leaves them, 
whether married or unmarried, stranded upon 
the sand-bar of a useless, fruitless life. " Your 
brother and his college mates tell you that their 



60 ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS, 

work has hardly begun with the receipt of 
diploma and degree," says Marion Harland. 
" Commencement day with them signifies the 
first step in the real career — the unclosing and 
flinging wide the gate revealing the highway of 
life." 

They have their life mapped out for them- 
selves from the beginning, in some rough way 
at least. It is business, or the law, or medicine, 
or divinity ; there is a goal somewhere. There 
is an end for them to strive for. Alas ! it is too 
often not realized. They faint in the day of 
adversity, or turn from the noble aim in view 
to chase an ignis-fatuus or to burj^ themselves in 
the dirt of a gold mine, but it is very much even 
to start, as every high-spirited boy does, with a 
noble aim beckoning him on. But girls are at 
a disadvantage from the beginning in this 
respect. There is a hazy impression that some- 
time Prince Charming will come along and carry 
them off. 



ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. 61 

But supposing he does not come, what then ? 
" It is pitiable and instructive to busy people," 
continues the author of Eve's Daughters, " to see 
the varieties of behavior in women who recog- 
nize the reality of the situation and seek to 
overcome its irksomeness. The majority and 
the most respectable of them begin to dabble 
industriously in something, it matters little 
what it is, so long as time and thought are 
engaged. A catalogue of the hundreds of 
species of what is known as 'fancy work,' to 
which this century alone has given birth, would 
show better than fifty formal treatises the 
prevalence of this dabbling, and the ingenuity 
with which the desire has been fed. 

" Crocheting, tatting, wax work, paper flowers, 
monochromatics, Kensington and outline em- 
broidery — time and memory would fail me, 
and patience would desert you were I to prolong 
the inventory. 

" Such, and a thousand other inventions of 



62 ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. 

play which is work and work which is play, are 
put forward in a fast succession of cheats to 
answer our question, ' What then ? ' " 

There is a certain temporariness in the pursuits 
of women that is greatly to their disadvantage 
as compared with a man's work. Your brother 
takes up his calling, meaning to make a life busi- 
ness of it. If he intends to be a carpenter, he 
does not learn how to drive the plane and fit 
the mortise as a temporary expedient, only to 
fill up the time until he shall be sent to Con- 
gress or dispatched on a foreign mission. If he 
studies medicine it is that he may spend his life 
in practicing medicine, not because he expects to 
be called to the bar one of these days. A young 
woman, on the other hand, too often takes up 
some employment as an expedient to kill time 
until Prince Charming appears, riding over the 
plains to claim his own. Next to having no 
aim is it to have this temporary expedient and 
time-killer for an object in life. 



ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. 63 

Prince Charming may come, very likely he 
will ; but it will be all the better for him and for 
her if he finds the object of his search honestly 
and patiently doing some one thing for which 
she has fitted herself, rather than nervously 
starting up at every ring of the doorbell, think- 
ing that it marks the advent of the prince. 

" Among the great dangers which threaten 
young women," writes one whose name is as 
familiar to the world as any name in America, 
" it seems to me, is an outlook on life without a 
purpose, a tendency to drift, to magnify the 
present moment, to give undue attention to 
externals and trifles, to seek happiness rather 
than blessedness." 

" A girl should have a motive, an aim in life," 
writes one of your teachers whom many of you 
love and revere. " Aiming at nothing she too 
often hits it." 

" A plan in life is what every young woman 
needs," writes a noted temperance lecturer ; " a 



64 ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. 

plan in life and power to carry out that 
plan." 

Of course this can only come from a true 
relation to and reliance on God. It is a good 
sign when the literary world will not accept 
Howell's heroines as ideals of true womanhood, 
and when it cries out for something stronger. 
" They are beautiful, affectionate and almost 
morbidly conscientious," says Lippincott's Mag- 
azine for instance, in a recent criticism, in speak- 
ing of this novelist's feminine characters, " but 
they are idle, inconsequent, and more or less 
jealous, incapable of philanthropy, hard thinking 
and decided action." 

I have scores of letters on this point, or re- 
lated matters which I have not time to give 
you. One of your friends tells me she thinks 
there is a very great lack of decision of charac- 
ter in our girls of the present da)^, or that 
perhaps it would be better to say stability of 
character. 



ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. 65 

" Girls lack moral backbone," writes the suc- 
cessful principal of a young ladies seminary. 
" One of my own girls says to me on this point, 
1 Girls are all too much afraid of what others 
will say.' " 

But I must hurry on to tell you that Aim- 
lessness is, in my opinion, only one of a large 
family of sisters who usually travel in company. 
One of these sisters is Idleness. I know that 
just here many of you will protest and say : 
" Whatever my faults, you can't lay this to my 
door. Why, I'm busy from morning to night. 
I am driven from the time school begins until 
vacation comes again, and then it isn't much 
better. I'm so busy that I can hardly find time 
to read my Bible or say my prayers." 

Ah ! that is just it. There is a busyness 
which is not business. There is an activity 
which is the veriest idleness, and that is the 
kind of idleness I most fear for you. 

What are you busy about? that is the ques- 



66 ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. 

tion. If you are too busy to read your Bible 
and good books, to think and pray, it is alto- 
gether probable that, with all your fancied 
hurry, you have a pair of those hands for which 
the old couplet tells us that " Satan finds some 
mischief still to do." 

" If our girls could only be induced to spend 
more time in prayer and meditation," writes 
one. " It is the same cry with the children as 
the older ones — ' no time.' And in the busy 
whirl of every-day life it seems to me there is 
scarce any leisure for thinking. They will 
listen, receive what is said, and hurry on, but 
to think out anything for themselves, or really 
to take any part of their day for meditation, is 
a rare thing even among older ones, and so 
when asked a reason for an expressed belief or 
opinion, often the only one that comes is, c peo- 
ple say so,' or something just as weak." 

A piece of advice which many of you need 
is : If you would not be idle, do not begin to 



ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. 67 

do so many things. The so-called accomplish- 
ments of the sex are often the direct promoters 
of idleness. 

It is not at all necessary that you should 
spend just so many hours a day in strumming 
the piano or wielding the paint brush, if you 
have no particular taste or talent in that direc- 
tion; but it is necessary that you should re- 
member that there is a womanhood within you 
to cultivate, which is not at all dependent upon 
Checkering or Steinway. 

A true, noble woman may be too busy to 
cultivate the artist within her. She may not 
know the difference between an Old Master 
and a tea-store chromo, but such a woman is 
never too busy to think and pray, and read that 
which will build up her soul. 

Take off the weights from the old eight-day 
clock that stands in the corner, and the hands 
will fly around at a great rate, exceedingly 
busy, we say, but the busier they are the less 



68 ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. 

value they are, for their mission is not to fly 
around the dial, but to mark time. I am not 
decrying these accomplishments. They are all 
well in their way ; they all may be made aids 
to a noble life, if there is a large worthy aim 
and motive pervading all ; but if they engross 
your minds to the exclusion of better things, 
they are hinderances and not helps, and the 
sooner you stop and think why you are here, 
and whither you are going, and what you are 
doing, the sooner you may escape the charge of 
idleness. Paradoxical as it may seem, it is 
sometimes true, the less busy you are the less 
idle you are. To escape the charge of idleness, 
you must not only be doing something — you 
must be doing something worthy of a human 
being. 

Another sister of Aimlessness is Cowardice. 
Courage is not thought to be a womanly virtue 
— more's the pity — and I suppose that is the 
reason that cowardice, however reprehensible in 



ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. 69 

a man, is considered rather amiable in a woman. 
To scream at the sight of a harmless mouse, 
and go into spasms over a spider, and have con- 
vulsions because of a striped snake on the 
garden walk, seem to be considered in the light 
of accomplishments rather than otherwise, and 
the confiding terror that catches hold of the 
masculine arm at sight of a harmless cow in 
the pasture is supposed to show unsophisticated 
innocence. I do not think, however, that weak 
nerves should be cultivated as a boon to the 
human race, or that hysterics should be looked 
upon with any more favor than small-pox or 
mumps. They both are inevitable sometimes, 
but both disfigure and make unlovely the true 
woman. 

Not that I think that women are naturally 
more cowardly than men. All history proves 
the contrary. There are depths of courage in 
many a woman's breast, which only need the 
opportunity of a great occasion to reveal them- 



70 ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. 

selves. Witness the martyrs who have died for 
their faith, witness the heroic sacrifices of women 
in sick rooms and hospitals, witness the uncom- 
plaining heroism of many an invalid wearing 
her life away on a sick bed, with a smile on the 
face which sought to conceal from watchful 
friends the long anguish. 

" The noble behavior of the soldiers on the 
sinking Birkenhead," says Miss Cobb, " was 
not greater than was that exhibited by the 
twenty poor nuns who, in the French Revolu- 
tion, stood together on the scaffold chanting 
the Te Deurn, till, one by one, the sweet voices 
dropped in silence beneath the axe of the 
guillotine ; still the survivors sung on, with 
unfaltering lips, till the abbess, left alone, 
gave forth the last Amen, and the glorious 
hymn was over. Or to take another phase of 
courage, What man or woman is there who 
would not have found it easier to ride with the 
Six Hundred, in broad daylight, into the Valley 



ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. 71 

of Death at Balaklava, than to have spent a 
night in the dark in that awful tete-a-tete of 
which we have read of Sister Dora and the man 
dying of small-pox ? " And yet, as Miss Cobb 
intimates, many of these same women might 
have shown the white feather on a very small 
provocation. The mouse on the chamber floor, 
the cow in country lane, might have been too 
much for their nerves, and have made those 
blanch whom the guillotine could not scare. 

So I feel like calling upon you all to under- 
stand and use the treasures of courage which 
are really yours. Just as we would say to a 
miserly millionaire, " Your money is yours only 
to use, not to hide in a napkin ; it is a shame 
for you to place your bonds in an iron box, 
while you bury the box in the ground, when 
thousands are starving and nations are perish- 
ing for lack of the Gospel." So we say to you, 
young women, with your fund of real courage : 

"The world needs it. It is perishing for 



72 ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. 

lack of brave souls who dare to go ahead and 
do great things for God. For humanity's sake, 
do not think that the soft, shrinking nature, 
afraid of its own shadow, afraid to speak a 
brave word or to do an unconventional deed, is 
peculiarly womanly and admirable. 

The world cannot be regenerated without the 
help of brave women as well as of brave men. 
It has been too long thought that courage was 
the prerogative of a man, virtue or purity of a 
woman. We shall never reach the true plain 
from which we can, altogether, men and 
women, with united effort, lift up humanity, 
until we realize this truth, that a man must be 
pure as well as brave, and that a woman must 
be brave as well as pure. 

As one of your friends finely puts it : " One 
of the principles which I am fond of enuncia- 
ting is that men should be pure as well as 
women, and that women should be courageous 
as well as men." 



ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. 73 

" I believe that there should be equality of 
the sexes in one particular at least, and that is 
in virtue, and that all women should insist on 
this so far as their influence reaches." 

How shall you attain this moral courage 
without having a great aim in view? The 
soldiers who have a fort to storm or an order 
to carry out, are the soldiers who do not flinch. 

If they know not and care not for what they 
are fighting, they lack the very foundation of 
courage. You cannot make much of a hero out 
of a hired Hessian. Cowardice is almost always 
the sister of Aimlessness. 

" Womanly, unaffected, dignified frankness," 
writes another friend (and this is only another 
name for courage), " will allow a girl to express 
her convictions without losing the respect of 
her acquaintance. I know, from having tried 
it a good many times," she continues, " that a 
young lady loses no friendships worth retain- 
ing by saying : ' I made a resolve years ago 



74 ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. 

that I could never have anything to do with 
men who were not true gentlemen at heart. 
Furthermore, I know that in our hands lies 
the power of working genuine reforms along 
this very line." 

Says another : " I tremble for two young 
girls whom I know, as I hear their names 
coupled with two young men, and see to 
all appearances the strong attachment existing 
between them, and the talk of marriage at no 
distant day. Both of the young men are ir- 
religious and intemperate. If every young 
woman would take a decided stand on the side 
of temperance, and refuse the attentions of a 
young man that drank, it would do more good 
than all the temperance lectures in the world." 
But that requires courage, and courage that is 
coupled with the highest aim to do right, cost 
what it may, for Christ's sake. Remember, my 
young friends, that it is your right and duty 
to be courageous as well as virtuous ; ' that 



ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS- 75 

courage is born of a high, noble aim, and that, 
in the highest sense, you cannot be pure with- 
out having the courage of virtue as well as its 
spotlessness. 

Another sister of Aimlessness is Invalidism, 
or semi-invalidism. The ill health of our 
American women is notorious. What is the 
cause? Overwork? Yes, to some extent; but 
underwork is a greater cause. Where ambi- 
tion, the straining at too large an aim, has one 
victim, aimlessness and idleness has two vic- 
tims. In many a New England farm kitchen, 
in many a nursery, there are doubtless women 
broken down prematurely by hard labor. But 
in many another house, humble or wealthy, are 
women equally broken down by the wearing 
effort to do nothing and do it genteelly ; by the 
worry of having no worthy aim, and living up 
to it. 

" Teach your girl honesty of purpose and 
practice," says Marion Harland on this point, 



76 ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. 

"and to call things by their right names. 
Show no charity to the faded frippery of senti- 
ment that prates over romantic sickliness. In- 
culcate a fine scorn for the desire to exchange 
her present excellent health for the estate of 
the pale, drooping human-flower damsel; the 
taste that courts the fascination of lingering 
consumption ; the sensation of early disease, 
induced by the rupture of a blood-vessel over a 
laced handkerchief, held firmly to her lily 
mouth by agonized parent or distracted lover." 

" I was cheered," she continues, " as by the 
finding of a treasure, the other day, at over- 
hearing a 3 r oung girl say scornfully to a school- 
fellow : ' I should be ashamed to be sickly ! 
No ! I won't call it delicate. It is verjr indeli- 
cate, to n^ way of thinking. I say the word 
out plainly — sickly. It is as much my duty 
to keep well as to keep clean. Of course acci- 
dents will happen in spite of precautions, but 
no one is proud of having fallen in the mud." 



ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. 77 

If in the line of duty ill health overtakes 
you, that is another thing. If in nursing and 
care and loving ministration you wear your life 
out, I am not talking to you. 

Such ill health is as honorable as a soldier's 
scar or empty sleeve. But if you are frittering 
away life and health at balls and late parties, 
and by aimlessness and lack of energy which 
can never arouse itself to stem trouble and dis- 
ease, then remember that slow suicide of this 
sort is no more honorable than a dose of strych- 
nine or a plunge from a railing of the bridge. 

I have all honor for the worn mother whose 
pale cheek and wrinkled brow tell of loving 
vigils and constant care for loved ones, but I 
have no honor or respect for the aimless, lacka- 
daisical young person whose pale cheek tells 
only of chalk and slate-pencils and chocolate 
creams and late hours. There is nothing 
interesting or pathetic about her. 

There is another matter which I must not 



78 ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. 

fail to dwell upon while mentioning the sisters 
of Aimlessness. It is the intellectual food 
which these sisters feed upon. It is the fuel 
which keeps alive the bale-fires of a wasted 
life. It is the solace of a weak mind, the 
comfort of aimless hours. 

Let me write, if I can, a strong word against 
the weak, trashy literature which, more than 
anything else, if you indulge in it, will con- 
demn you forever to the hopeless ranks of the 
aimless and anxious. You are not so much 
attracted by revolvers and bowie knives and 
infant Indian exterminators as your brothers, 
perhaps, but there is a kind of trash which is 
just as common and just as harmful, and which 
low panderers to evil tastes will write and 
print, because such as you furnish a market 
for it. You do not care to ride over the Texas 
plain with Buckskin Buck, a six-shooter stuck 
in every crevice of his saddle and belt, as the 
boys like to do, but the same devil paints for 



ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. 79 

you a languishing young beauty with a husband 
whom she ought to love, honor and obey, who 
devotes her life to some scoundrel who has a 
wife of his own. 

She ought to horsewhip him for his dastardly 
attempts to make love to her, but she compla- 
cently listens to him as he talks twaddle about 
fate and destiny and affinity and so on. 

Better never learn your letters than to read 
about unholy love and seduction and divorce, 
and the horrible sins that are gilded and 
painted white in these miserable novels. Shun 
all this class of stuff as you shun leprosy. 
Better have the leprous scales on your face, 
where they will only ruin physical beauty and 
comeliness, than have them on the heart, where 
they will ruin the purity of the soul. 

Scarcely a week goes by but I find some of 
this trash thrust into my own house for my 
children to pick up and read. Flaring adver- 
tisements, advising my children to read about 



80 ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. 

"Little Lillie Lee," or the "Child Guard at 
Gen. Grant's Tomb," or " The Child Wife," or 
11 A Desperate Woman." Horrible pictures of 
murder and violence decorate them all. It is a 
shame that we have to submit to an invasion 
of our homes by such literary diet; that the 
law does not at least abate this nuisance. 

If once a week regularly some city scavenger 
should open my front door and throw in a load 
of garbage from the gutter, or some ill-disposed 
person should thrust an adder into the letter- 
box, hoping that my children would get stung, 
they would do me no greater wrong than these 
panderers to a cheap, vile taste that delights in 
murder, seduction, and adultery do when they 
thrust into ray house their " Little Lillie Lee," 
their " Child Wives," and their " Desperate 
Women." If the desperate woman would come 
herself she could be turned over to the police. 
If Little Lillie Lee should come in person, I 
could send her to the Little Wanderers' Home; 



ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. 81 

but coming as they do, we need to exercise con- 
stant vigilance, fathers and mothers, lest they 
become, before we know it, the companions of 
our children. Of all the many wise words that 
have come for you on this point, I can read but 
from one letter. This good friend of yours says : 
" Our public library has altogether too many 
cheap story books kept for the use of children. 
I often hear such sentences as these from 
young women : ' I know nothing of history ; 
hated it in school, and forgot it as soon as pos- 
sible, and never read it now. Biographies are 
dry ; I don't like travels, and I never read 
a word of Shakespeare in my life ; but I am 
a great reader ; I always have a book in my 
hand.' I heard one young lady make all these 
statements not long ago, and so I asked her 
what she liked to read best. ' Oh ! stories,' 
was the reply. Is it strange they have a wrong 
idea of life ; that their talk is chiefly about 
boys and havihg a good titbe ? " 



82 ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. 

I should think it very strange if with such 
an intellectual diet they ever had a more 
sensible thought in their head. 

In these days it is no great credit to be 
seen with a book in your hand, unless that book 
is one of the best. I sometimes think, as I 
remember the floods of trash that issue from 
the press, that Cadmus was no great friend of 
the race, after all. 

And now, young friends, in a closing word 
let me plead with you very earnestly to respect 
your womanhood, and to fill your life full of 
noble aims and lofty purposes. Root out the 
weeds, but do not forget to fill the empty garden 
of your heart with flowers and fruits. 

Throw away the bad book, but take up the 
good book, just as soon as you lay the other 
down. Do not simply be busy, but be busy for 
a purpose, with a prize in view, with the long 
plan of a useful life to work out. Do not 
simply be brave, be brave that the world may 



ANXIOUS AND AIMLESS. 83 

be better, by reason of your cheery courage. 
Do not simply be well and strong, be well and 
strong in order that something of your vigor 
and strength may pulsate through another life. 
Remember there is no such thing as a super- 
fluous woman, as we sometimes hear them 
facetiously called, unless you choose to make 
yourself superfluous. There are high motives 
enough to go around among you all. There is 
a noble aim for every one. There is a Chris- 
tian womanhood for the most lowly and shrink- 
ing ; and beyond this, if you comprehend all 
that the words imply, there is no higher destiny 
for a seraph or an archangel. 



CHAPTER IV. 

FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. 

Girlish Wild Oats — Girls will be Girls — Keep the Heart 
clean — The Silly Dispensation — The Flirt — The flip- 
pant young Woman — The Grace of Maidenhood — The 
ideal Girl — Dignity a Safeguard of Virtue — A trans- 
verse Section of a GirVs Heart — A Handbook of Flirta- 
tion — Exaggeration — The " too utterly utter" — Slander 
— The Gossip Tippler — The Gossip's Muck-rake — Im- 
purity — The Scarlet Letter of Immodesty — A Jewel 
thrown into the Gutter, 

TT is assumed by some that there is a certain 

-*- period of folly and wickedness that must 

be endured in the life of every young person, 

just as the baby must have more or less colic 

and be fretful and troublesome while cutting 

its teeth. The parent and teacher and moralist, 

84 



FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. 85 

seems to be the idea, must expect and plan for 
this, just as the mother lays in a stock of warm 
flannels and soothing syrup. 

In fact, even some Christians, from their 
actions, apparently believe that the Devil must 
have full sway with their children for a little 
while, in order that he may be driven out, by 
and by, by the Divine Spirit. 

In the young man this is called sowing his 
wild oats, and when he is seen puffing cheap 
cigar-smoke into the faces of people coming in 
or going out of church, when he is known to 
do little of summer evenings but support a 
lamp post on the street corner, when he is seen 
slinking into a rum-shop once in a while, and is 
known to come out again with poisoned breath, 
people say, " O, well ! he's young yet ; " u He'll 
come out all right ; " " Boys must be boys." 
When a girl is seen to be rude and boisterous 
and unmaidenly, when she transforms herself 
into a giggling machine and apparently cares 



86 FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. 

for nothing but the glances and facetious re- 
marks of the fast young man under the lamp 
post or in the church vestibule, just as many- 
people will say in excusing her : " Oh ! she's 
young yet;" "She will come out all right;" 
" Girls will be girls." 

I have no patience with this shallow philos- 
ophy. It is a dreadful mistake that we make 
when we reason in this way, or comfort our- 
selves with the thought that such waywardness 
and frivolity is a pimple on the skin, which will 
be sloughed off to-morrow. It is rather the 
deadly pustule that shows the diseased blood, 
and he makes a sad blunder that treats the 
pustule as he would the pimple. I do not say 
that these symptoms show an incurable state, 
but I do believe that such signs call for thought 
and watchfulness and ceaseless prayer. It is 
not necessary that our children should come to 
God out of the very clutches of the Devil. To 
be snatched " as a brand from the burning," is 



FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. 87 

not the natural way of entering the kingdom of 
God. The doctrine of total depravity does not 
mean that the boy or girl cannot be very good 
without first being very bad. The tendency 
may be corrected before it has developed itself. 
The little stream may be best turned before it 
becomes the swollen torrent. For this reason 
I am penning this warning to our jfair young 
girls to respect their womanhood, ijind not be- 
draggle it in the mud of frivolity, j of heartless 
flirtation. You cannot wash your heart as you 
can your pocket-handkerchief. Tcj> keep your 
heart clean is comparatively easy ; to cleanse it 
when once it is befouled, is an Augean task. 
Timothy Titcomb's words upon this subject are 
wise and helpful : 



" The silly dispensation or stage of a young woman's 
life is marked by many curious symptoms, some of them 
indicative of disease. They sometimes eat slate pencils 
and chalk, and have been known to take kindly to broken 
bits of plastering; others take a literary turn, . . . 



88 FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. 

others still take to shopping and dawdling with clerks 
who have dawning beards and red cheeks. If a young 
woman can £>e safely carried through this silly dispensa- 
tion, the great step of life will have been gained. Girlish 
attachments and girlish ideas of men are the silliest 
things in aljl the world. If you do not believe it, ask 
your mothers. Ninety-nine times in a hundred they will 
tell you that they did not marry the boy they fancied 
before they liad a right to fancy anybody. 

" If you dream of matrimony for amusement and for 
the sake of Killing time," he continues, " I have this to 
say, that, considering the kind of young man you fancy, 
you can do quite as well by hanging a hat upon a hitching 
post and worshiping it through your chamber window. 
To become a flirt is to metamorphose into a disgusting 
passion that w'hich by natural constitution is a harmless 
and useful instinct. 

" This instinct of coquetry should be left to itself, 
unstimulated a,nd unper verted, and, in the formative 
stage of your womanhood, by initiating shallow attach- 
ments and heartlessly breaking them, you are doing 
violence to you-r own nature, you make of yourself a 
woman whom yo»ur own sex despise, and whom all sensi- 
ble men are af ra id of. They will not love and they will 
not trust you. This instinct, then, is not a thing to be 
harmlessly playefl with ; and I know of few more unhappy 
and disgusting sights than a girl bringing into her 
womanhood this passion — harmful alike to herself and 
others." 



FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. 89 

I have brought to you this long quotation 
because the honored name coupled with it gives 
it a weight which adds to the wisdom and 
moderation of the sentiment. 

Frivolity and Flirtation are coupled together 
not for the sake of alliteration, but because 
they are twin sisters, rather we may call them 
Siamese twins. I never saw Chang without 
Eng. One could not survive the other. When 
we treat one of these twins we must treat 
the other at the same time. Besides advice 
from noted names in literature already quoted 
I have words no less wise and strong from those 
who appreciate more fully your circumstances, 
and sympathize with you in every struggle. A 
well-known author, whose books have often ab- 
sorbed your attention, writes to me as follows : 



" Flippancy is the most mischievous fault which threat- 
ens our young American girl. She takes nothing seriously 
excepting her lessons at school. She answers everything 
and everybody as lightly and wittily as is possible to her, 



90 FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. 

and if she is clever enough she is sarcastic. She gets a 
vague notion from modern stories that this is the way- 
society people talk. The consequence is that she, in cul- 
tivating this style, regards persons, things, principles, 
facts and events and herself in a half -quizzing, half -cyni- 
cal fashion, and our sweet, kind, merry, helpful, affec- 
tionate, old-fashioned schoolgirl is being replaced by a 
bold, bright, pushing person whom no one loves." 

" I believe," writes another, " the thing much 
to be deplored to-day with many of our girls, is 
the loss of the gentler, sweeter grace of maiden- 
hood — must I write it? — a lack of real mod- 
esty. There is a boldness, a loudness of speech, 
a flippant coquetry, meaningless and some- 
times questionable jesting- — which cannot fail 
to lower the standard and result in harm. Let 
me give you this beautiful picture of the * ideal 
girl' from this same good friend of yours. 
4 My ideal girl is a rare and lovely combination 
of sweetness and strength. Pure as the unsul- 
lied snow that falls on the crest of the hills, 
strong as the everlasting hills themselves to 



FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. 91 

demand purity for purity in the young men 
with whom they clasp hands.' " 

" There is great danger," says another, " for 
the girls who are raised above the need of earn- 
ing their own living, lest they fall into frivolity. 
Within a month I heard the pastor of one of 
the largest and best suburban churches say that 
he had fifty girls in his congregation — most of 
them church members — who are too frivolous 
to be depended upon for any real, earnest 
church work. Their mothers are lovely women, 
deeply engrossed in various forms of charitable 
work ; but the girls are too much taken up with 
dress, society, art and literary pursuits to count 
for much in church work." 

"I have noticed," says another, "that one 
great danger lying in the path to noble woman- 
hood, is want of sobriety. Young ladies should 
cultivate dignity, as dignity is a safeguard of 
virtue." Of course this friend does not mean a 
stilted outward propriety, that is scrupulous 



92 FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. 

simply about little matters of etiquette ; she 
means, I know, a ladylike, dignified soul, which, 
while it may be full of sunshine and glee and 
fun, has an instinctive horror of the loud and 
boisterous and unmaidenly ; such pure sweet 
dignity is to the maiden soul what a rich fit- 
ting frame is to a rare and beautiful picture. 
It protects it from defacement and allows no 
careless, wanton hand to mar its beauty. 

" If I were to impress any one thing more 
than another upon the young women of to-day," 
writes another, " it would be that thej^ are 
lacking in womanly dignity. They need to be 
told that they hold themselves too cheap — so 
cheap, that young men treat them as they 
would a garment ; wear it a while and then cast 
it aside as useless. The absence of this grace 
of womanly dignity is a stepping-stone to a life 
of dishonor. If these same girls could hear the 
estimate of their character as expressed by 
these same young men, their ears would tingle." 



FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. 93 

I have implied that the frivolous girl and the 
flirt are usually synonymous names for the 
same being. If j r ou could see a transverse sec- 
tion of the brain and heart of the frivolous girls, 
as you can sometimes cut into a tree and see 
the rings which mark the years of its growth, I 
sometimes think that after you get by the core 
of babyhood, you would find on each concentric 
ring the name of some young man. Last year's 
ring of growth bore the name of John, and the 
year before it was Charlie, and the year before 
Henry, and the year before William. 

School and church, home and mother — yes, 
and Christ himself — I say it reverently — has 
been crowded out, because there has been no 
room in that heart or head for anything but 
John or Charlie or Henry or William. These 
rings of growth in the heart do not mark whole- 
some, natural likes or loves, but merely suc- 
cessive and usually heartless flirtations, which 
render callous the nature which should always 



94 FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. 

retain its childlike purity and freshness. " No 
tone in Nature's music," it has been said, " is 
sweeter than a child's laugh ; the gush of a 
stream that gurgles because it has no depths, no 
sullen pools, or foaming rapids. It is an offense 
to taste and feeling, when, like a dam built with- 
in the bed of the brook, the child begins to long 
for a woman's name and triumphs. Grace and 
naturalness take flight hand in hand. Frank- 
ness is exchanged for slyness, the pure straight- 
forwardness of the look for the sidelong glance, 
the musical laugh for the simper. The unripe 
peach begins to blush outwardly, but to toughen 
within." 

"One great danger that young women are 
exposed to," writes a wise mother, " is in being 
on the street a great deal engaged in what may 
seem like harmless flirtation, but which some- 
times ends in most serious results. I have in 
mind a young lady who is much on the street 
while her mother thinks she is at the home of a 



FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. 95 

friend. I believe she is an innocent girl now, 
but I tremble for what may happen to her if 
she is not awakened to a sense of her danger. 
Young friends, did you know that there is a 
class of harpies in the community that reckon 
on this trait of character, and hope to grow 
rich by luring you on in this same way which 
seems so innocent and so bedecked with flowers 
at first?" 

A father told me, the other day, that he was 
horrified at finding that his little, innocent 
twelve-year-old girl had sent to her through the 
mails, an advertisement of a " handbook of flirta- 
tion." This book professed to give full direc- 
tions as to " how to win a lover." It told very 
minutely how to manage a handkerchief or fan 
flirtation. How one motion meant, " meet me 
on the corner," and another, " T am yours," and 
a third, " I'll come when the old folks are out 
of the way," and other things too bad to speak 
or print. 



96 FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. 

I did not wonder that his soul was boiling 
with indignation to think that these serpents 
should get the names even of little girls in the 
primary school in order to teach them their 
devilish tricks ; and I mention this fact here, 
that the fathers and mothers, knowing that such 
vipers are crawling about the community, may 
beware of their slime and their sting. But, 
after all, young friends, the cure rests with you, 
not with your fathers or mothers. Your hearts 
are in your own keeping. If these rings of 
frivolous, heartless flirtation do mark your lives, 
you do not need to allow any more to grow. 
Next year's ring of growth may be pure and 
sweet and wholesome. There is a sound, inno- 
cent heart, I believe — the innocent heart of 
childhood — in every one of you, which is not 
overlaid or hidden completely by the frivolity 
and worldliness of subsequent years. Get back 
to that. It is the Bible rule : " Except ye be 
converted and become as little children, pure, 



FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. 97 

innocent, loving, tender, ye cannot enter into 
the kingdom of heaven." 

In the last chapter but one I told j^ou about 
the sisters of Aimlessness. In this let me say a 
few words about some relatives (they are at 
least as near as first cousins) of Frivolity. 

One of these first cousins of Frivolity is ex- 
aggeration in the use of words, and a very near 
relative of exaggeration is slang. 

" I was walking along the street the other 
day," says Dr. Holland, " when I met an ele- 
gantly dressed lady and gentleman upon the 
sidewalk. As I came within hearing of their 
voices — they were quietly chatting along the 
way — I heard these words from the woman's 
lips : ' You may bet your life on that.' I was 
disgusted. I could almost have boxed her ears." 

" A woman who deals only in superlatives," 
he continues, " demonstrates at once the fact 
that her judgment is subordinate to her feelings, 
and that her opinions are entirely unreliable." 



98 FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. 

All language thus loses its power and signifi- 
cance. The same words are brought into use 
to describe a ribbon in a milliner's window, as 
are employed to do justice to Thalberg's execu- 
tion of Beethoven's most heavenly symphony. 
Let me insist upon this thing. Be more eco- 
nomical in the use of your mother tongue. If a 
thing is simply good, say so ; if pretty, say so ; 
if very pretty, say so ; if fine, say so ; if very 
fine, say so ; if grand, say so ; if sublime, say 
so ; if magnificent, say so ; if splendid, say so. 
These words all have different meanings, and you 
may use each one in referring to as many differ- 
ent objects, and not use the word perfect once. 

That is a very large word ! This is the same 
vice at its root that leads the boor on the street 
or the hoodlum to be profane, the desire to 
overemphasize your words and give them a 
little temporary importance. 

Where you say a thing is "perfectly splen- 
did," or " too awfully good for anything," he 



FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. 99 

will prefix a vile oath. Neither of you mean 
what you say, or know what you mean. 

This whole custom was satirized a few years 
ago by the sunflower aesthetics who exhausted 
all epithets and had recourse only to reduplica- 
tion to express their feelings ; so that a thing 
became at last " too utterly utter " or " too 
too." Such ridicule ought to have shown the 
folly of this straining after hyperbole, but I 
am afraid it did not altogether accomplish its 
object. We must remember that this was a 
subject which our Lord himself did not think 
too insignificant for him to touch upon, since 
he tells us : " Let your conversation be yea, yea, 
and nay, nay, for whatsoever is more than these 
cometh of evil." 

Two more first cousins of Frivolity are 
Mesdames Gossip and Slander. One able- 
bodied gossip or slanderer is enough to break 
up a whole church, and inaugurate the vendetta 
in any community. 



100 FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. 

My soul loathes with a perfect loathing that 
one who from pure maliciousness takes up a 
tale against her neighbor, and I warn you, 
young friends, have nothing to do with such a 
one, be she young or old. Remember the 
same finger of God that wrote on the rock 
tablet " Thou shalt not kill," also wrote " Thou 
shalt not bear false witness against thy neigh- 
bor," and gossip is always next door to false 
witness. This is a habit that grows with what 
it feeds on. The young tattler is the middle- 
aged gossip, and the old slanderer. 

Why, I know women and men, too, for that 
matter, who are as much wedded to their 
gossipy stories as any old tippler to his cups. 
It would be just as hard to reform one as the 
other. We have inebriate asylums, where 
the poor fellow is shut away from the taste and 
smell and sight of liquor; w T e ought to have 
retreats for confirmed gossips, where they could 
never mingle again with their kind, for as sure 



FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. 101 

as they do they will find something to gossip 
about. In fact, their case is worse than the 
toper's, for while he may regain a healthy 
stomach and an un vitiated appetite, the slan- 
derer's heart, even if touched by the spirit of 
God, will never lose the pits and scars which 
mar it. 

I have seen such gossips, with whom you 
could not talk five minutes on any subject with- 
out hearing something bad of some one. Their 
neighbor across the way they have no good 
word for, the church they attend is full of cheats 
and shams. After a while they have no friends ; 
their sharp tongue makes acquaintances shy, 
and neighbors give them a wide berth. They 
become unhappy, moody, miserable, despicable, 
until at last they drop into an unwept grave, 
and every one breathes more freely, because 
they no longer pollute the common air. 

Bunyan's Pilgrim in the Interpreter's house 
saw a man very busy w T ith a muckrake, gather- 



102 FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. 

ing together refuse and rubbish while all the 
time there hung over his head a golden crown, 
waiting for him. But he never lifted his ej'es 
to it. " But the man did neither look up nor 
regard, but raked to himself the straws, the 
small sticks and dust of the floor," says Bunyan. 
What a perfect description of the gossip and 
slanderer. She rakes together all the dirt she 
can find. In another person's character she 
tries to find it, in the ill-savory talk of the 
police court, in the reeking columns of the low 
newspaper. Wherever she finds it she gathers 
it together and saves it for future distribution. 
Marion Harland compares her to the carrion 
fly who only enjoys food after it is so rank that 
no decent person wants to touch it. " The 
gamin," she says, " who would not hearken to 
a story of a good little boy unless he might 
afterward be treated to one about two bad little 
boys, ' uncommon rum 'uns, you know,' was 
honest in the expression of this instinct. At 



FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. 103 

heart he was a nascent vulture, and in his sim- 
plicity revealed the hankering after carrion." 
If these carrion flies were only bad little boys 
in the street we could take care of them easily. 
Sometimes they live in a fine house, sometimes 
by mistake they get into the church, but you 
can tell them by their buzzing, by their fault- 
finding, by their back-biting, by the way they 
seek to sting, and by the way they are dis- 
trusted and disliked. 

"One of the most attractive sights," says 
one whose words to the young are always wise, 
" is that of a young woman who not only will 
neither say nor hear ill of any one, but who 
takes especial pains to notice those whom the 
crowd neglects. Such a woman is the ad- 
mired of all whose admiration is worth secur- 
ing. And now, young woman, if you are one 
of the sharp ones, and are tempted to say keen 
things, remember that you are in very great 
danger of injuring yourself, not only in your 



104 FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. 

own soul, but in the eyes of all those whom 
you imagine you are pleasing." 

But, after all, nearly related to Frivolity as 
are these evils, gossip, slander, loud talk and 
immodest behavior, there is the mother of them 
all, and I should not be doing my whole duty, 
did I not point her out to jou. 

This mother of so numerous a family is Im- 
purity. The scarlet letter is somewhere to be 
found on the mother of this hateful brood. In 
Hawthorne's powerful story you remember the 
poor, sinful woman of the tale had to stand on 
the pillory all day with the blazing scarlet A 
imprinted on her breast* that all might see it. 
Ah! if we could always see it. We should 
shudder with affright and turn away as the old 
Puritans did from the hapless woman of the 
story. 

But the scarlet letter is there, perhaps, 
printed on the secret heart, where no eye but 
God's can see, but always there. Do not say it 



FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. 105 

is a harmless flirtation ; do not call it mere 
loudness or brassiness or passing frivolity. Of 
course I am not speaking now of girlish glee or 
fun or effervescence of animal spirits — all this 
I rejoice in. But wherever there is a taint of 
immodesty, the scarlet letter is always there, 
and you have begun to walk in the ways of her 
whose steps take hold on Death. Because of 
the preciousness of your treasure I urge you 
with all earnestness to guard it well. You are 
tossing away your Kohinoor when you are 
dallying with temptation of this sort. The 
frivolous flirt throws her only jewel into the 
gutter for swine in human form to tread upon. 

The bloom on the peach once brushed off 
does not return. Paint it ever so skillfully, 
you cannot restore its bloom. The virgin lily 
once crumpled and bruised is never itself again, 
however you press out its white petals. The 
snow, smirched and blackened, is never again 
the symbol of purity that it was when it fell 



106 FRIVOLITY AND FLIRTATION. 

from heaven. Therefore I would say to you 
with words, burning hot, if I could compass 
them, Beware, beware, beware of the first step 
on the road that may lead you at last to the 
pillory, to take your place beside the outcast 
woman with the blazing scarlet letter on her 
breast. 



CHAPTER V. 



GETTING MARRIED. 



A serious Topic — Before the Divorce Court — A personal 
Experience — Milton and Wesley — Fear of being an old 
Maid — A Rival of Cuvier — A House and a Home — 
Selling One's self for a Home — Do not marry a Man to 
reform Him — A young Woman's Opportunity — Messa- 
ges from Mothers — The Conclusion of the whole Matter. 



T HESITATE to approach this theme of get- 
-*- ting married, not because it is of little 
importance, but because it is of such vast im- 
portance that I feel the need of divine guidance 
in treating it plainly but wisely. I hesitate 
also, because so much that is silly and weak 
and namby-pamby has been written and spoken 

107 



108 GETTING MARRIED. 

on the subject, that it has thus been almost en- 
tirely removed from the category of serious 
topics. 

The buffoon and the clown in the circus ring 
and the funny paragrapher have been given a 
monopoly of this subject, until it has been 
crowded out of serious conversation, and 
crowded into the facetious half-column of the 
weekly newspaper. 

If any one expects to find in these chapters a 
series of attempted witticisms or sharp sayings 
from the standpoint of the funny man, he will 
be disappointed, for it is with prayer and earn- 
estness and most serious purpose that I would 
talk to the girls about " Getting Married." 

u Free-lovism," says Dr. Talmage, when 
speaking of the evils of divorce, "has struck 
the good ship Marriage from one side, and Mor- 
monism struck it from the other side, and hur- 
ricanes of liberalism have struck it on all sides, 
until the old ship needs repairs in every plank 



GETTING MARRIED. 109 

and beam and sail and bolt and clamp and tran- 
som and stanchion." 

But we may talk and pray against divorce 
all we will ; we may multiply our anti-divorce 
leagues, and strengthen our laws; this is all 
well, but we must go farther back than this. 
Long before the divorce court looms up to the 
view, happiness has fled. Long before that 
was the unwise, foolish choice brought about 
by thoughtlessness and trivial ideas of the 
whole subject of love and marriage. There is 
the fountain-head of the evil. The whole mat- 
ter has been minified and degraded by unworthy 
thoughts and unworthy jokes and unworthy 
imaginings, until one hesitates to touch it, even 
with the desire of dignifying and elevating it. 
The divorce court stands at the end of the 
long lane, but the frivolous, thoughtless, mean- 
ingless flirtation, or, rather, the totally un- 
worthy and trivial view of the marriage relation, 
stands at the beginning of the lane. 



110 GETTING MARRIED. 

Very often, in my ministry, couples have 
come to me to get married, with a license regu- 
larly made out and signed by the city registrar. 
There was no ostensible reason that I could 
give for not marrying them, and yet the whole 
thing was evidently so lightly regarded, so 
thoughtlessly entered into, with so slight an 
acquaintance, and so little regard to the irrevo- 
cable future, that I have hesitated to pronounce 
those solemn words that bind two lives together. 
Sometimes I have refused to do so, but more 
often with a slight twinge of conscience I have 
performed the service, not knowing exactly 
what else to do. To make any amends that I 
may be able, for harm unwittingly done, I now 
desire to speak a most earnest word. 

For the young women this matter is of even 
more serious consequence than for those who 
become their life-long partners. 

We read more, perhaps, of the unhappiness 
that has come to the man, for he more often 



GETTING MARRIED. Ill 

fills the public eye, and his woes reach the 
public ear; but while an unhappy marriage is a 
misfortune to him, it is disaster to the woman. 

We sympathize with Socrates, forever berated 
by a termagant wife, and with Milton, who had 
the sore trial of a vixenish shrew added to his 
blindness, and with John Wesley, whose wife, 
it is said, used to make up faces at him from 
the pew, while he preached the Gospel from the 
pulpit; but, whereas we know all about one 
Socrates and one Milton and one John Wesley, 
there are ten thousand broken-hearted, neglected 
wives whom we never hear about. " A woman 
cannot afford to make a mistake," says the 
brilliant preacher I have already quoted. " If 
a man err in his selection, he can spend his 
evenings at the club, and dull his sensibilities 
by tobacco smoke; but woman has no club- 
room for refuge, and would find it difficult to 
habituate herself to cigars. If a woman make 
a mistake here, the probability is that nothing 



112 GETTING MARRIED. 

but a funeral can relieve it. Divorce cases in 
court may interest the public, but the love- 
letters of a married couple are poor reading, ex- 
cept for those who write them. Pray God you 
may be delivered from irrevocable mistake." 

Then, in the first place, I would say : Do not 
marry a man for fear of remaining an old maid. 
One of your friends to whom I wrote puts this 
at the head of a long list of evils to which she 
thinks you are subject, and she adds these 
noble words : " Be brave to meet life as a single 
woman, if God wills it so, and desire to honor 
that position rather than fling away all that is 
most precious to every woman, for the sake of 
the world's opinion. While they laugh at us, 
they need us," she continues, " so that we have 
the best of the bargain." 

That is most true. The world needs you all. 
It has little use for a broken-hearted wife, with 
the spirit crushed out of her by the kicks and 
neglect and unkind words of a masculine 



GETTING MARRIED. 113 

wretch whom she calls her husband. She can 
do very little toward making the world more 
pure or sunshiny ; but the maiden lady, be she 
one score or threescore years of age, can fill a 
place, which forty such wives would leave 
empty, with happiness to herself, and blessed- 
ness to all whom her influence reaches. What 
a benediction to many and many a household 
is this maiden sister, or aunt, or cousin ! More 
often than not she remains as she is because 
she is wiser and wittier than her sister who 
jumps at the glittering bait, only to find that 
there is a barbed hook beneath it, and that the 
marriage ring is not a golden fetter of love, but 
an iron band that presses all that is lovely and 
sweet and fresh out of the life. If I could get 
this idea into many a prett}', thoughtless little 
head, that there is something beside beaux and 
marriage to look forward to, that the noblest 
life may be the single life, I should be doing a 
service which will be none the less real because 



114 GETTING MAKRIED. 

I may never receive any thanks for it. The 
little seven-year-old girl of whom we have read 
is hardly a caricature on the silly sentimentality 
that often creeps into the nursery before pina- 
fores are discarded. " Uncle Horace," she said, 
"eight and seven make fifteen, don't they?" 
"Yes, my child." "Then," she said, "it is 
only eight years before I have a beau, and — 
oh ! I dread it." 

I like to re-enforce my words just here with 
the wisdom of one who never approaches such 
a subject without illuminating it. "Women 
too often grow up from the cradle with the 
idea that it is a horrible thing to be an old 
maid. That, in the minds of half the girls, is 
the most terrible thing in the world. They 
can abide anything better than that. So they 
feel a kind of obligation to jump at the first 
offer, they are so much afraid they shall never 
have another. Let them remember that a mis- 
mated match is much worse than an unmated 



GETTING MARRIED. 115 

life. I believe that marriage is the true condi- 
tion, but I know that every man or woman will 
be more unhappy, if they are badly matched, 
than if not matched at all." 

The question of late has become almost a by- 
word, " Is marriage a failure ? " Without going 
into the general subject, it requires no prophetic 
gifts to predict that your marriage will be a 
failure if you marry a man simply because you 
like him, or have a passing fancy for his good 
looks or manly graces. The chances are that 
these looks and graces exist largely only in 
your own imagination. 

Some one has remarked that as Cuvier could 
construct a whole animal from a single bone, so 
a romantic girl can construct a hero out of a 
single glance of the eye or wave of the pocket 
handkerchief. But the difference is that while 
Cuvier's animal would doubtless be true to 
nature, your hero would have no counterpart 
outside of your vivid imagination. When you 



116 GETTING MARRIED. 

came to know him, you would find, like your 
little sister in the nursery, when she dissects 
her doll, that he was stuffed with saw-dust, or 
that he was a very cheap edition of Nature's 
noblest work, " bound," as has been wittily said, 
" in whole calf." Here is where the evil that I 
deplore, and am warning you against, usually 
starts. It is the attraction of a passing fancy 
magnified by an active imagination. A sad, sad 
disillusion too often follows. With the utmost 
seriousness I would say, Be very careful not to 
mistake a transitory fancy for lasting love. It 
is an awful and solemn promise that you make 
at the marriage altar. Do not promise to love, 
honor and obey him in whom there is little to 
love and nothing to honor, and whom you can 
not obey without losing all self-respect. If 
only your happiness in this world were con- 
cerned, I might well utter this warning. If 
only the next forty years of your life hinged on 
this matter I might well occupy a page in dis- 



GETTING MARRIED. 117 

cussing it. But when it is remembered that 
the making or marring of eternal blessedness 
often hinges right here : that not forty but 
forty million years may depend upon this 
choice, the full import of the matter is un- 
derstood. 

To quote Dr. Holland once more: "It is a 
shame that women have no more opportunities 
for a choice." " My own wife," he goes on to 
say, " very fortunately got an excellent hus- 
band, but it is something for which she is to be 
grateful to an overruling Providence, for her 
own knowledge had very little to do with it. I 
could have cheated her be} r ond all account. 
I tell you, men want studying for some years 
before you find them out, and it becomes you 
to run fewer risks than most of your sex run in 
this business. It is a good deal of a step, this 
getting married, and I am very anxious that 
you should know a great many men, that you 
should get the one you love, that he should be 



118 GETTING MARRIED. 

worthy of you, and that you should be happy 
all the days of your life." 

Again let me say to you, young ladies, do not 
marry simply for the sake of a home. If that 
is your sole object you will very likely get a 
roof to cover your head, but it may be anything 
but a home. A home to which a drunkard 
comes reeling, with poisoned breath and inco- 
herent speech, is no home. A table with a 
swinish brute on one side, and a patient Gris- 
elda, who pours out his tea, on the other, does 
not furnish a home. A shiftless, ne'er-do-well, 
who cannot support himself, much less a family, 
can never provide you a true home. 

There are ten thousand houses in every great 
city that enshrine no homes. In the home 
there must be respect and forbearance and 
mutual interests, and, above all, love. It may 
be ever so poor, without any bric-a-brac, with- 
out a single expensive tidy, with no grand 
piano, with no drapery at the windows and no 



GETTING MARRIED. 119 

Brussels on the floor. It may contain only two 
straight-backed chairs, a table and a stove, and 
yet be a true home, if on the secret altar the 
fires of love are kindled before marriage, and 
are allowed to burn freely and cheerily after 
marriage. 

Now listen attentively, I beg of you, to this 
ringing message that has been sent you by 
one of my wise correspondents : " One danger 
which threatens our young women is that of 
selling themselves. They work year after year, 
for very small wages, go home at night to small, 
uncomfortable rooms, sit down and think of 
the hard lines in which their lots are cast. Few 
take any interest in them, and they find life's 
work drudgery, and life itself almost a burden. 
They struggle on, trying to keep up appear- 
ances, and at last discouraged, sell their finer 
instincts and blunt their consciences, accepting 
— purely for a home and because they are so 
tired — the proffered protection (?) of those un- 



120 GETTING MARRIED. 

fit to associate with them, much less to call 
them wives. I know a young lady in the city 
who married a man who is not her equal, and 
from whom she is far removed in age, simply 
because he has money to spend in dressing her, 
and she is 4 so tired ' of struggling alone. It is 
possible to live on very little, and be happy and 
independent on that little. In many cases it 
seems to me that all that is needed to help our 
girls is to make them less selfish, less bound up 
in thinking of their own lot in life ; to open to 
them the richness there is in life, the value of 
living and struggling when there is a purpose 
in it. 

These are noble words. I wish they might 
be written in letters of gold and hung up in 
your chamber, where first of all in the morn- 
ing your eyes might fall on them, and thus 
realize the richness of every life that has a 
noble purpose running through it. That is the 
secret of it ; learn that secret, and your life, 



GETTING MARRIED. 121 

with or without a husband, will be rich and 
fully blessed. 

Once more let me say, Do not marry a man 
for the sake of reforming him. " If now," says 
Dr. Talmage, very wisely, " under the restraint 
of your present acquaintance he will not give 
up his bad habits, after he has won the prize 
you cannot expect him to do so. You might 
as well plant a violet in the face of a northeast 
storm with the idea of appeasing it. You 
might as well run a schooner alongside of a 
burning ship with the idea of saving the ship. 
The consequence will be, schooner and ship 
will be destroyed together. If by twenty-five 
years of age a man has been grappled bjrtfcntoxi- 
cants, he is under such headway that your at- 
tempt to stop him would be very much like 
running up the track with a wheelbarrow to 
stop a Hudson River express train. It is amaz- 
ing," he continues, " to see how some women 
will marry men, knowing nothing about them. 



122 GETTING MARRIED. 

No merchant would sell a hundred dollars' 
worth of goods on credit without knowing 
whether the customer was worthy of being 
trusted. No man or woman would buy a house 
with incumbrances of mortgages and liens and 
judgments against it uncanceled, and yet there 
is not an hour of the day or night for the last 
ten years, that there have not been women, by 
hasty marriages, intrusting their earthly happi- 
ness to men about whose honesty they know 
nothing, or who are incumbered with liens and 
judgments and first mortgages and second 
mortgages and third mortgages of evil habits." 
It is a terribly dangerous experiment that 
you ara engaged in when you marry a rake for 
the sake of reforming him. But I will tell you 
of a plan that is perfectly safe and wise. Re- 
form him before you marry him. There is a 
chance to display all your powers and charms 
as a philanthropist and a reformer. Use them 
to the utmost. Beforehand you have every- 



GETTING MARRIED. 123 

thing in your favor, and let the young man 
know that if he cannot give up his cups he 
must give you up ; if he cannot keep away from 
the gambling-table, he must keep away from 
you; that he must make a choice forever be- 
tween his roisterous companions and you. Give 
him time to see that this reformation is no tem- 
porary expedient for the sake of winning a 
bride, but that the heart and life and character 
are affected ; then, if you love him, let him 
talk of marriage. God has given you this 
power to use for him. Every grace, every 
virtue, every charm, the mysterious halo, call it 
illusion or delusion if you will, that surrounds 
every maidenly attraction, is a God-given influ- 
ence put into your hands to regenerate the world. 
I have great respect and admiration for the 
Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and all 
organizations that have for their object the lift- 
ing up of the drunkard, and the rescuing of the 
boy from the rum-shop ; but you have more 



124 GETTING MARRIED. 

power, if you would exercise it, in just this line 
than all the temperance societies in the world. 
Your argument with some young man will be 
more effective than the eloquence of John B. 
Gough ever was, or even the sweet persuasive- 
ness of Frances Willard. From your hands 
the pledge will be accepted when it would be 
spurned from mine. I have a strong regard for 
the White Cross Movement, and every effort 
that is made for social purity ; but your influ- 
ence will more quickly blot out the damning 
sin against which it aims than all the efforts of 
the Bishop of Durham and his co-laborers. I 
am heart and soul in sympathy with the Law 
and Order League, and every organization that 
has for its aim the suppression of vice ; but if 
we could only enlist you on the right side, if 
God would make you strong to speak the right 
word and do the brave deed, you could do more 
than all these societies put together, though 
they were backed up by all the police and 



GETTING MARRIED. 125 

militia of the world. If every young woman 
in the world should say to-day : " I will never 
marry a man who drinks ; I will never marry a 
man who is licentious ; I will never marry a dis- 
honest sharper; I will look before I leap into 
any man's arms, and know what I am doing " ; 
I say, if every young woman should make that 
resolve, the slow and weary reforms which 
have been dragging their length through the 
ages would make a century's advance in an 
hour. 

I have dwelt upon this negative side of our 
subject so long, because positive truth underlies 
it all. Let me give you here the same message, 
couched in positive words, written by mothers 
who know well how to put the truth : " Choose," 
says one, " as the partner of your heart, your 
home, your life, a good, sound, clean-hearted 
man, who loves you, and wins your love by the 
development of tastes congenial with yours; a 
man whom, as a friend, you could esteem and 



126 GETTING M ARMED. 

admire were he the husband of another. That 
is a test that would dissipate a mere fancy into 
thin air. Be slow to believe yourself in love. 
The reality is a beautiful yet an awful thing. 
It is putting your life out of your own keeping. 
Marriage, even to one you love deeply and 
sincerely, is the risk of all that time can give 
you of bliss, maybe of heaven's hopes as well, 
upon the utterance of a dozen sentences, a 
speech not two minutes in length." 

" The structure of a true marriage must be 
laid upon the basis of a true individual life," 
says another. " When men and women have 
conceived and accepted the idea that all good 
in earth and heaven is intended to minister 
directly and indirectly to individual growth, 
and that that which we call evil, toil, poverty, 
sorrow, pain and temptation to sin, are intended 
for the development of power and the discipline 
of passion ; when they see that life tends up- 
wards, and is only a preparation for another 



GETTING MARRIED. 



127 



sphere and a better, and that all that surrounds 
them is perishable, then they can have a con- 
ception of what true marriage is. The relation 
is illuminated with its full significance only by 
this true idea of individual life." 

Realize the significance and importance and 
the vast interests that for you, above all others, 
hang on the marriage relation. Never, never 
marry or engage yourself to marry as a joke, or 
in the spirit of fun, or because the fancy seizes 
you. It would be just as sensible to joke at 
your lover's funeral, and would show about as 
much appreciation of the fitness of things. 
Let there be but one supreme reason for mar- 
riage; not propinquity, not a passing notion, not 
to get a home or to get rid of work and worry, 
not from a sentimental desire to reform a rake, 
but because love and respect go hand in hand, 
and because God's evident approval crowns the 
union. While the divorce mills are grinding 
out their ceaseless grist, let the solemn words 



128 GETTING MARRIED. 

which close every marriage service ring in your 
ears : " What God hath joined together let no 
man put asunder." Consider such a union, 
however desirable, as not the inevitable lot or 
the only path to happiness or usefulness, and 
prepare for it, not by idle dreams and constant 
trap-laying, but by living honestly, lovingly, 
usefully, Christ-likely, remembering that the 
only way to become a good wife is first to be- 
come a good woman, strong and pure and 
gentle and true. Then, very likely, there will 
be added, one of these days, to the beautiful 
homes which so bless this poor old world, 
another home in which you shall be the priestess, 
and where the angel of peace and love shall 
abide forever. 



CHAPTER VI. 

MOTHERS, SISTERS, DAUGHTERS. 

Training up a Parent in the way he should go — The 
Mothers of Great Men — Alfred the Great — Johnson — 
Washington — Patrick Henry — The Mother should be 
the Confidante — Young Americas — A Mother's Wis- 
dom — Antiquated Mothers — Mother's Sacrifices because 
she loves you — Bishop Thompson's reminiscences — The 
Spirit of the Tease — The other GirVs Brother — A Sis- 
terly Influence — The Home of Bethany. 

rTIHE author of " John Halifax, Gentleman," 
-*- in a bright little book called " Sermons 
out of Church," heads one chapter, u How to 
Train Up a Parent in the Way He Should Go," 
and begins it with the remark of a rather fast 
young lady, u O, dear ! I'm afraid I shall never 

129 



130 MOTHERS, SISTERS, DAUGHTERS. 

manage to bring up my mother properly." 
There is certainly much truth in the remark of 
an old Quaker which she also quotes, a remark 
addressed to a lady who contemplated adopting 
a child : " My friend, I know not how far thou 
wilt succeed in educating her, but I am quite 
certain she will educate thee." 

I thank God that there are so many wise and 
devout mothers in this world of ours, so few, 
comparatively, that are careless and godless and 
prayerless. How few there are who do not 
bring the little hands together at night, and 
teach the little lips to say " Our Father ! " The 
brightest spot in the future outlook for Amer- 
ica and the world is right here, that the race of 
pious mothers is not dying out. 

One of the most sacred places in London is 
the Bunhill Fields Burying-ground, where the 
mother of the Wesleys is buried. The rise of 
Methodism can be traced further back than to 
John and Charles Wesley. The wisdom, the 



MOTHERS, SISTERS, DAUGHTERS. 131 

consecration, the godliness of the Wesleys' 
mother, descended to her children, is written 
upon every page of its records. The influence 
of godly mothers has come to be one of the 
commonplaces of literature. 

The mother of Alfred the Great was his first 
teacher. Dr. Samuel Johnson never forgot the 
religious principles which he learned from his 
devout mother, when a little child in bed. 

Doddridge was converted by the Dutch tiles 
of the fireplace, it is said, but it was because a 
beloved mother explained them to him, and 
from them taught him Scripture history ; while 
John Randolph used to say, " I should have 
been an atheist if it had not been for one recol- 
lection, and that was the memory of the time 
when my departed mother used to take my 
hands in hers, and cause me on my knees to 
saj T , ■ Our Father which art in heaven.' " 

Some one who has studied this subject has 
brought together these suggestive facts : " Sir 



132 MOTHERS, SISTERS, DAUGHTERS. 

Walter Scott's mother was a superior woman, 
well educated and a great lover of poetry and 
painting. Byron's mother was proud, ill-tem- 
pered and violent. The mother of Napoleon 
Bonaparte was noted for her beauty and energy. 
Lord Bacon's mother was a woman of superior 
mind and deep piety. The mother of Nero was 
a murderess. The mother of Washington was 
pious, pure and true. The mother of Patrick 
Henry was marked by her superior conversa- 
tional powers." 

Follow back the history of almost any man 
or woman, distinguished for good or evil, and 
you will find, if you could but know the truth, 
that at the door of life stands a mother, of like 
nature and similar characteristics, sending the 
child forth with a blessing or a curse for man- 
kind. But it is not simply the careers that fill 
the eye of history, and the names that spring to 
the lips of cheering crowds, whom the mothers 
have blessed or cursed. 



MOTHERS, SISTERS, DAUGHTERS. 133 

There may be a John Wesley, or a Philip 
Doddridge, or a Harriet Martineau, or a Mary 
Lyon among the Johnnies and Philips and Har- 
riets and Marys of your nurseries. At any 
rate, these Johnnies and Harriets and Marys are 
as dear to the mothers' hearts, their souls are as 
precious in God's sight, our responsibility is 
as great, as if it was certain that every one of 
them would occupy a queen's throne or manage 
affairs of state. 

As we think of Madame Lsetitia, the mother 
of the Bonaparte family, one son Emperor of 
France and King of Italy and well-nigh dictator 
of the world, another King of Holland, another 
King of Westphalia, another King of Naples 
and Spain, we say to ourselves, such a woman, 
the mother of kings, should be governed, in- 
deed, by high aspirations and the noblest aims 
in bringing up such a family. But we cannot 
believe that the humblest and most obscure 
mother, in God's sight, is any the less responsi- 



134 MOTHERS, SISTERS, DAUGHTERS. 

ble for the training of those God has committed 
to her ! Carelessness in the mother often means 
wickedness in the daughter. 

And right here let there be an earnest word 
spoken to the mothers to make confidantes of 
their daughters, and to keep up these confiden- 
tial relations as long as life is spared. What a 
world of wretchedness and sin might have been 
escaped if to the mother's heart the daughter 
always fled with every secret, knowing that 
nothing was too sacred to reveal to that loving 
ear. " I think," says a wise friend, " that one 
of the best safeguards for a young girl is to 
make a confidante of her mother in every little 
thing. When I overhear a young girl say, 
when asked not to tell anybody what has been 
told her, c I shall tell my mother, for I tell her 
everything,' I feel that that girl is safe." 

I have manj 7 - messages from the mothers, of 
this tenor, of which I can quote but one or two : 

" When American mothers shall have adopted 



MOTHERS, SISTERS, DAUGHTERS. 135 

a golden mean between the restraint imposed 
upon French girls and the unwise liberty per- 
mitted to our own, I believe few dangers will 
await our girls, even when they leave the home 
roof to earn their own living. And when 
mothers make, as too many do not, the daugh- 
ter's welfare first in their hearts, placing it 
before all social pleasures, before all public re- 
forms, before all church work even, and win 
their entire confidence, these dangers will be 
still further diminished. The girl who keeps 
no secret from her mother is a safe girl." 

From one who has written to the girls a long 
letter packed with wisdom, I must make room 
for a few of the many words I would quote. 
"Our girls need mothers," she writes. "To 
how many of our mothers is their daughter's 
secret heart-life a sealed book? How many 
daughters, bright and sunny girls, will freely 
scatter confidences among their mates with the 
laughing injunction, fi Now don't you tell. I 



136 MOTHERS, SISTERS, DAUGHTERS. 

wouldn't have mother know for anything ! ' 
And why ? Why and where and when, mother, 
was this little heart-cord snapped which once 
joined the young life to yours, heart of your 
heart, and soul of your soul? Did you once 
smile at the folly of their conceits, and call them 
foolish, and let the first doubts of Mother's per- 
fect sympathy thrill the little heart with pain, 
and give the first separating stretch to the 
precious link binding you together as one? 
Oh, wise and loving mothers ! ' chum ' with 
your children from the very beginning. Then 
will you hold them sweet and pure for yourself 
and for the Master, for time and eternity." 

I know that these pages reach a great num- 
ber of loving, devoted mothers, mothers who 
would give their lives for their daughters. 
Allow me to leave one question with them. Do 
you know your daughter now as you did when, 
a little tired, curly-haired romp, wearied with 
the day's play, she nestled at night in your 



MOTHERS, SISTERS, DAUGHTERS. 137 

arms, or is she growing away from you as she 
grows older? Does she have her secrets now 
which you do not share, and confidences into 
which she does not want you to enter? Are 
your paths gradually diverging — she going one 
way and you another ? Oh ! for her soul's 
peace and yours, get back into the same path 
with her, and walk with her, with even step. 
Any road in which her mother cannot walk by 
her side, is full of pitfalls and snares and thorns 
for the daughter, full of heartache and sorrow 
for the mother. 

Young America has many good points. 
Young America is bright and piquant and 
cheerful and usually good-natured, but rever- 
ence for elders and respect for parents are not 
two of his strong points, to whichever sex 
young America belongs. We have heard dim 
traditions of the way in which children of a 
past generation, let loose from school, took 
pains to be polite and respectful when their 



138 MOTHERS, SISTERS, DAUGHTERS. 

elders passed by. In other countries, we have 
even seen the rows of children on either side of 
the road, as the stranger went by, drawn up to 
pull the respectful forelock and drop the cour- 
tesy. But we never thought of looking for 
such a thing in America. We should be almost 
as much surprised by such politeness and defer- 
ential respect, as by the sight of a white crow 
or a snowstorm in July. But I am not writing 
for the sake of berating the manners of the 
present generation, but for the sake of whisper- 
ing in the ears of the girls : " Be very polite 
to, be very thoughtful of, be very tender to 
one person in the world, and that one a person 
whom you are apt to treat with more disrespect 
and carelessness than any other — your own 
mother." I have two or three good reasons 
for urging this advice upon you most earnestly. 
In the first place, she knows more than you 
do, and her advice is entitled to respect. To be 
sure, she may not be able to play the piano as 



MOTHERS, SISTERS, DAUGHTERS. 139 

well as you do, and perhaps cannot talk French 
at all. Very likely she isn't so fresh in arith- 
metic and geography, and possibly she makes a 
slip in grammar or pronunciation occasionally, 
for which you blush. But, after all, there is no 
doubt about it, she knows more than you, and 
her advice and counsel are worth heeding, as 
you will surely know when you get by the 
callow wisdom of girlhood. 

If you differ with her, it is most likely that 
she is right and you wrong. If you think 
she is old-fashioned, it is more probable that she 
is simply sensible. If you think she is straight- 
laced, it is extremely likely that she is only 
prudent, and you cannot with safety, even 
though it seems to you that she is an hundred 
years behind the times, as you sometimes say, 
forget that the fifth commandment reads : 
" Honor thy father and thy mother." 

44 It is disheartening, dear girls," says Marion 
Harland, "let one tell you who has thought 



140 MOTHERS, SISTERS, DAUGHTERS. 

herself into a dull, fixed heartache on this sub- 
ject, to be swept aside by inches, or boldly 
removed from the board where one was, not so 
very long ago, a figure of some consequence. 

" We mothers, enriched by the experience of 
years, grown patient and wise through the dis- 
cipline of our long probation, beseech you to be 
charitable to our slowness and merciful to the 
stiff movement of mental muscles that copy with 
pain new postures and paces. 

"Mamma is antiquated in language and 
dress; in works and in ways non-progressive. 
Had she chosen to neglect you instead of her- 
self, had she given to her own studies and 
mental culture the hours devoted to drilling 
you in early tasks, had she kept pace with 
society in place of sitting out the long evenings 
and bright days in the nursery, had the stitches 
set in small frocks, trousers and coats gone 
toward furnishing her own wardrobe, you 
might have had less apparent cause to be 



MOTHERS, SISTERS, DAUGHTERS. 141 

ashamed of her. You would undoubtedly, had 
you survived the process, have now more and 
just reason to blush for your own defects." 

This leads me to say that another good reason 
for obejdng the fifth commandment in letter and 
in spirit, is that this same mother has, for a 
dozen or fifteen or twenty years, been making 
every sacrifice for you. The young man that 
picks up your handkerchief or helps you over 
a muddy crossing, you reward with a most 
bewitching smile and profuse thanks ; but what 
has he done or what would he sacrifice for you ? 
He would hardly throw away the stump of a 
cigar before he was done with it to please you ; 
and yet, the mother who has given all but life 
itself, and would give that if it was necessary, 
rarely sees such a smile on your face, and never 
hears such winning words of thanks and appre- 
ciation. Oh ! these furrow-browed, white-haired 
mothers, whom I sometimes see treated so cava- 
lierly by blooming daughters ! " If the daughters 



142 MOTHERS, SISTERS, DAUGHTERS. 

could only read the lesson of these furrows," 
I say to myself. Every wrinkle tells of a 
grinding sacrifice ; every white hair of a sleep- 
less night; every angularity of form, of a 
restless babyhood, and weeks when an anxious 
one bent over a sick child in the crib ; of days 
of watching and nights of unrest; of work in 
the kitchen and the ceaseless clatter of the 
sewing-machine treadle. All this story and 
countless other chapters of a similar tale are 
written in many a beautiful old face that I have 
seen. Girls, look into your mother's face and 
see if there is not such a story there, and if you 
can read it, that old face will have a beauty in it 
that you never suspected was there. Says the 
author of " The Marriage Ring " : " The fallen 
at Chalons and Austerlitz and Gettysburg and 
Waterloo are a small number compared with the 
slain in the great Armageddon of Kitchen. 
You go out to the cemetery and you will see 
that the tombstones all read beautifully and 



MOTHERS, SISTERS, DAUGHTERS. 143 

poetically ; but if those tombstones would speak 
the truth, thousands of them would say, w Here 
lies a woman killed by too much mending and 
sewing and baking and scrubbing and scouring ; 
the weapon with which she was slain was a 
broom or a sewing-machine or a ladle.' ' There 
is a good deal of truth in this, and I hope that 
before the cemetery is reached, these dear 
mothers, who have been for a score of years, 
more or less, wearing themselves out for you, 
will find themselves so relieved by your loving 
sympathy and help, that their last journey 
through the gravej 7 ard gates will be delayed for 
many a long day. 

There is a single other reason that I would 
urge upon you for this dutiful respect and 
obedience which is so charming. It is that the 
one who has thus worn herself out for you has 
done it because she loves you, and love can 
only be satisfied with answering love. You are 
starving your mother's heart when, by word or 



144 MOTHERS, SISTEBS, DAUGHTERS. 

action, you seem to deny her your love. If she 
was actually starving for want of physical food 
how you would hasten to procure it ! Every 
penny that you could earn or beg would go for 
this purpose, and you would esteem nothing too 
hard to do for her ; and yet I imagine that there 
are a good many hungry hearts that are not far 
from starvation for lack of a daughter's love. A 
word of sympathy ; a radiant smile, just one of 
them saved from the young man, and devoted 
to the mother ; some want anticipated ; a kiss 
of love ; an artless caress : all this is food that 
would keep alive many a famished heart. Some 
day, I am sure, you will think of these things. 
I pray God that it may not be too late to pro- 
vide this food which keeps the heart from 
starving. 

Some day you will think of her as Bishop 
Thompson, in his reminiscences of boyhood, 
speaks of his mother. " If I seat myself upon 
my cushion," he says, " it is at her side ; if- 1 



MOTHERS, SISTERS, DAUGHTERS. 145 

sing, it is to her ear ; if I walk the garden paths 
or meadows, my little hand is in my mother's 
and my little feet keep company with hers ; if 
I stand and listen to the piano, it is because my 
mother's fingers touch the keys ; if I survey 
the wonders of creation, it is my mother who 
points out the object of my admiring attention ; 
if a hundred cannon pronounce a national salute, 
I find myself clinging to her knees ; when my 
heart bounds with its best joy, it is because, at 
the performance of some task or the recitation 
of some verses, I receive a present from her 
hand. There is no velvet so soft as a mother's 
lap, no rose so lovely as her smile, no path so 
flowery as that imprinted with her footsteps." 

There is still another relative of yours, young 
ladies, whom I would ask you to consider. 

You regard him sometimes as a plague and a 
nuisance, T know ; but though I admit that he 
often is most exasperating, there is a better 
light in which to consider him. " That little 



146 MOTHERS, SISTERS, DAUGHTERS. 

brother of mine is such a bother ; " " That big 
brother is such a tease," I often hear some sister 
say. In an obituary notice that I once read, a 
young man was spoken of through a bad mis- 
print as the eldest " bother " of such and such a 
distinguished individual. I wish that these mis- 
takes and elisions of a letter might occur only 
at the printer's font and never in real life. 

" Let sisters not begrudge the time and care 
bestowed on a brother," writes one whose pithy 
words I have before had occasion to quote. 
" It is hard to believe that any boy that you 
know so well as your own brother can ever turn 
out anything very useful. Well, he may not 
be a Moses. There is only one of that kind 
needed in six thousand years. But I tell you 
what, your brother will be either a blessing or a 
curse to society, and a candidate for happiness 
or wretchedness. Don't snub him. Don't de- 
preciate his ability. Don't talk discouragingly 
about his future. Don't tease him. Brothers 



MOTHERS, SISTERS, DAUGHTERS. 147 

and sisters do not consider it any harm to tease. 
That spirit abroad in the family is one of the 
meanest and most devilish. There is a teasing 
that is pleasurable, and is only another form of 
innocent raillery; but that which provokes and 
irritates and makes the eye flash with anger is 
to be reprehended. It is the curse of innumer- 
able households that the brothers tease the 
sisters, and the sisters the brothers. Sometimes 
it is the color of the hair, or the shape of the 
features, or an affair of the heart. Sometimes 
it is by revealing a secret, or by a suggestive 
look, or a guffaw, or an ' Ahem.' Tease ! tease ! 
tease ! Christ says, ' He that hateth his brother 
is a murderer.' Now when you, by teasing, 
make your brother or sister hate, you turn him 
or her into a murderer or murderess." 

Did you ever think of this, that probably that 
brother whom you apparently think so little of 
is fully as worthy a boy as that other girl's 
brother whom you think is "just nice " ? You 



148 MOTHERS, SISTERS, DAUGHTERS. 

do not think that he is, because you know him 
better, but probably there is some other girl 
who thinks at this moment that he is very near 
perfection, while she has a very moderate opin- 
ion of her own brother, whom you admire. It 
would be well if you should exchange eyes with 
her for a little while. There is much in your 
own brother that you have not discovered. He 
is probably a bright, manly, courageous fellow, 
with all his faults, and I know you love him in 
your inmost heart, but I want to have you 
manifest that affection in more helpful ways. 
Do not always pair off with some other girl's 
brother ; do not make your own feel that he is 
of no account, and that you cannot enjoy your- 
self at a party or concert or lecture if he is 
the only one who sits by your side, and goes 
home with you afterwards. 

Do you know why God has put you in the 
same family and given you a common father 
and mother? It did not come so by chance, 



MOTHERS, SISTERS, DAUGHTERS. 149 

but that you might exert a sisterly influence 
over him, pure and sweet and wholesome ; an 
influence that will raise him out of many a bog 
in which his coarser, masculine nature may 
otherwise get bemired. Very much of his true 
success in life will depend upon his ideal of 
womanhood. If that ideal is exalted, he can 
never become utterly debased. If that ideal is 
low or trivial, he cannot rise very high in the 
scale of manhood. His ideal of womankind 
will be very much what you show yourself to 
be. You will be his gauge and standard of 
other women. Most likely your heart will be 
first touched by divine truth, and will first 
accept a Saviour's love. Be to him, then, such 
an example of maidenly Christliness that he 
cannot miss his way to the cross. It was to 
Lazarus' sister that our Lord first made the 
joyful announcement : " Thy brother shall rise 
again." Through you the Lord will speak to 
many a brother, telling him to rise from his sin 



150 MOTHERS, SISTERS, DAUGHTERS. 

and begin the new life, the true life of a true 
man. Let us always bear in mind how our 
blessed Lord dignified and exalted these earthly 
relationships. His mother bore the name that 
many of you bear ; his dear friends were the 
sisters of the house of Bethany ; he thought the 
ruler's daughter of enough consequence to exert 
his supreme, miraculous power, and of the three 
whom he raised up to life she was one, and he 
has said, "Whosoever shall do the will of my 
Father which is in heaven, the same is my 
brother and sister and mother." 

I know of no stronger appeal to make to your 
womanly natures. Because of what He has done 
for you, because of the honor He has put upon 
you, because of the mighty influence He has 
given you to exert, as mothers, daughters, 
sisters, be true to your high calling in all these 
relations of life. 

" Show us how divine a thing 
A woman may be made." 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE QUEEN ON HER THRONE. 

The Summons to the Throne — How Princess Victoria 
received it — The Throne — All other Kingdoms insig- 
nificant — False Independence — The Idea of Marriage — 
The Queen's Scepter — What is Love ? — The Test of the 
Gem — The Pleasant Girl — The two Bears — The Queen's 
Bobe — Her Wide Kingdom — A selfish Home — The 
Crown — Two Heavens both called Love. 

"1VTEARLY fifty years ago, one morning in 
-^- ^ June, two messengers, persons no less dis- 
tinguished, indeed, than the Lord Chamberlain of 
England, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
made their way from Windsor Palace, where 
William the Fourth had just breathed his last, to 
Kensington Palace, where the Princess Victoria 

151 



152 THE QUEEN ON HER THRONE. 

lived. Says the record, as quoted by Justin 
McCarthy : " They knocked, they rang, they 
thumped for a considerable time before they 
could rouse the porter at the gate; they were 
again kept waiting in the courtyard, then 
turned into one of the lower rooms, where they 
seemed forgotten by everybody. 

" They rang the bell, and desired that the 
attendant of the Princess Victoria might be sent 
to inform Her Royal Highness that they re- 
quested an audience on matters of importance. 
After another delay, and another ringing to 
inquire the cause, the attendant was summoned, 
who stated that the princess was in such a sweet 
sleep that she could not venture to disturb her. 
Then they said, ' We are come on business of 
state to the Queen, and even her sleep must 
give way to that.' " 

It did, and she did not long keep them 
waiting. 

There comes such a message to every young 



THE QUEEN ON HER THRONE. 153 

woman. It is not borne by an archbishop and 
a lord chamberlain. The result of the mes- 
sage is not breathlessly awaited by an expectant 
nation. There are no booming cannon and 
blazing bonfires to tell that another queen has 
come to her throne ; but nevertheless, such a 
message goes forth from One higher in author- 
ity than any messenger of church or state. It 
comes not simply to one favored young person 
in a century, who lives in a palace, but to every 
young woman who will hear comes this com- 
mand from God: "Be a queen. Take your 
place on your throne. Assume the scepter ; 
clothe 3'ourself in royal ^ermine. A crown will 
at last be placed on your brow." As the Prin- 
cess Victoria was asleep when the message first 
came to her that she was henceforth Queen of 
England, so I fear many are asleep to great 
privilege and opportunity ; and I pray God that 
this book may have some power to arouse 
them to a sense of their high calling. As soon 



154 THE QUEEN ON HER THRONE. 

as the princess heard that she was a queen, she 
could sleep no longer. If I could only show 
you, young women, your worth and dignity, 
you would lay aside everything that was un- 
worthy, and would assume the queenly honors 
that are rightly yours. 

Of course you know what I mean. Your 
queenly honors are not bestowed by the powers 
and ceremonies of a court ; they are not incon- 
sistent with washing dishes in the kitchen, or 
sweeping in the parlor, or tying little Johnnie's 
shoes, or running on an errand for the tired 
mother, or hunting up the dressing-gown and 
slippers for father. In short, the throne to 
which I would be the messenger to call you is 
in the home. 

In England, but one supreme monarch can 
rule at the same time. Not till the old king 
drew his last breath could Victoria assume her 
new honors ; but, though there are ten millions 
of queens in America, there is room for ten mil- 



THE QUEEN ON HER THRONE. 155 

lions more. Though in the home where you 
live some gracious queen has reigned long and 
benignantly, you will not crowd her off by tak- 
ing your seat on the same throne. There is a 
chance for every royal character in this kingdom 
of home. You will not accuse me of narrowness 
of view, I am sure, or of hostility to woman's 
highest rights, when I say that, after all, your 
supreme place of influence is in the home. 
First cultivate yourself as a human being. 
Recognize your rights, remember the vastness 
of your influence, train yourselves for the high- 
est places ; this has been the burden of my de- 
sire for you ; and yet, while I hold to all this, 
and abate not a jot, I also believe that your 
throne is in the home, that there alone you may 
exercise your highest powers, your queenliest 
influence. The realm of authorship is open to 
you, to the lecture platform you may aspire, the 
highest places in almost all the professions are 
no longer walled away from the ambitious 



156 THE QUEEN ON HER THRONE. 

woman, yet it is no less true now than when 
Sarah made Abraham's tent a true home for 
him, or Rebecca came from Padan Aram on 
camel-back to make Isaac's home happy, that 
the home is woman's throne. 

Whatever opportunities the future may open 
to you and your sisters — and I believe that they 
will be large and abundant — all other realms will 
be petty and insignificant, compared with the 
kingdom which you may rule from this throne. 
Let me call your attention to the opinion of 
some of your best and wisest friends on this sub- 
ject. "The quiet home virtues need strength- 
ening," says one. " Our colleges and other 
educational institutions are doing a great work 
in furnishing the army to fight the battles of 
life and to help make lovely homes, too ; but is 
there not danger, in this progressive age, of for- 
getting somewhat those homely domestic vir- 
tues, which help so truly to make up the blessed- 
ness of life ? " 



THE QUEEN ON HER THKONE. 157 

Let me call your particular attention to these 
thoughts which I am about to quote from one 
with whose graceful pen many of you are famil- 
iar : " The points of womanly character, which, 
in my opinion, most need strengthening, are 
most emphatically the home qualities. I must 
confess that I am alarmed as I read exhorta- 
tions week after week in the papers for girls 
' to take care of themselves,' to be ' independ- 
ent,' etc. You are aware that there are scores 
and scores of American homes throughout the 
land where the father earns only a moderate 
living, and where the daughters are restless to 
go out in the world and earn something. They 
are not willing to stay in the home and econo- 
mize and plan to make it attractive to father 
and brothers, nor to train themselves to be 
really efficient in domestic matters. 

" Most of them prefer to spend part of their 
wages in hiring a servant to do the kitchen 
work if necessary, and go into a shop or mill. 



158 THE QUEEN ON HEK THRONE. 

They feel more 4 independent ' ; and just here I 
am reminded to remark that if girls must go 
out into the world, and enter into the struggle 
for bread, do let them be taught the value of 
saving. It is a long step toward preserving a 
girl's virtue, when she takes more satisfaction 
in seeing two dollars entered against her name 
in a bank account than in spending that amount 
for brass bangles and false frizzes. But let the 
prime end and object of the saving be for the 
making of a home for somebody, somewhere, at 
some time. It has become the fashion in late 
years to decry thinking about marriage as the 
principal thing in a girl's life. Doubtless there 
has been much false teaching on this point, and 
unfortunately there are too many women who 
have allowed themselves to deteriorate mentally 
and socially by getting married ; and the pres- 
ent tendency to educate girls away from the 
idea of marriage may be the pendulum swing- 
ing to the other extreme. 



THE QUEEN ON HER THRONE. 159 

" But would it not be better to elevate the 
idea of marriage as the highest possible sphere 
which a woman can fill? Oh, if girls could 
find their supreme joy, not in things, but in 
people, not in adding to their accomplishments 
and attainments, except as a means to influence 
souls for good ! 

"Men are the natural bread-winners in this 
world ; women are the natural makers of the 
homes. Fathers and sons and brothers would 
labor with far more zeal and success if the 
mothers and daughters and sisters would spend 
their energies in making home attractive. The 
men do not mind hard knocks much if they can 
go home at the close of a day's service to a 
haven of rest and comfort, such as only a 
woman's love and tact can make. All this can 
not be secured, however, without character. A 
girl may have a very lofty ideal as to what a 
home ought to be ; but for carrying out her 
ideal she must possess the qualities of sweet- 



160 THE QUEEN ON HER THRONE. 

ness and patience, and tact and grace, and cheer- 
fulness and efficiency, and a thousand other 
qualities not needed in any other position. A 
very ordinary girl may possibly succeed as a 
copyist or an elocutionist or a saleswoman ; 
but it takes a very extraordinary person to 
make the highest success of that most difficult 
and grandest of all arts — making a true 
home." 

This is a long quotation, but these words are 
packed so full of wisdom that I have given this 
letter to you almost entire. 

The queen, as a symbol of her power, on oc- 
casions of state bears a scepter in her hand. 
There is a right royal scepter, too, which I 
would put into your hand — the scepter of love. 
There is none other so potent. The Queen of 
England's scepter is made of silver gilt, or, at 
the best, of pure gold ; your scepter is one of 
which pure gold is only a symbol. The queen 
lays hers aside on ordinary occasions, and it is 



THE QUEEN ON HER THRONE. 161 

locked up in the jewel-room for strangers to 
gape at behind the bars which guard it ; your 
scepter need never be laid aside, for it is not 
simply the jeweled symbol of power, but it is 
power itself — the power of love. 

" What is love ? " says one ; " a weak, gushing, 
effusive quality, that makes the weakness of 
women?" Nay, love is rest ; it is warmth, com- 
fort, nourishment, strength, home ; it is life ; it 
is the omnipotence of God. As the head has 
no life till the heart quickens it, so wisdom is 
not wise until love informs it. 

Love, let us remember, is something more 
than a sentiment. Here is where the fatal mis- 
take is most often made in domestic life. The 
sentiment and poetry of love is all very well in 
its place. I would not decry it or undervalue 
it, but I say that it is altogether worthless if it 
cannot stand the test of the wear and tear of 
every day. 

Here is a sparkling gem. How it glitters 



162 THE QUEEN ON HER THRONE. 

and glistens ; what depths of fire there seem to 
be in its heart ! But we have heard that cer- 
tain persons have been very successful in im- 
itating diamonds and rubies, and we are a little 
suspicious of our gem, so we will take it to the 
jeweler's. " How much is this worth ? " we 
say to him. He opens a little vial and drops a 
single particle of acid on the jewel, and behold 
the sparkle dies out of it, and the simulated fire 
in its heart is quenched, and we see that it is a 
worthless bit of paste. But if it is a real gem 
the acid rolls off like so much water, and in its 
inmost heart it sparkles as brightly as ever. 
There is an acid about the every-day experi- 
ences of life which always shows the difference 
between real love and sentimental love. 

The girl that will look as sweet as an angel 
when a certain young man makes his appear- 
ance at the parlor-door, and who will scowl like 
a fiend when, the next hour, her mother asks 
her to dust the parlor furniture — her love is 



THE QUEEN ON HER THRONE. 163 

made of paste ; it isn't the genuine article. The 
one who will spend a week working a pair of 
suspenders and a fancy hat-band for her lover, 
and snap out something about " bothersome 
brothers," when one who is thus related merely 
asks her to sew on a coat-button, may glitter 
and sparkle before marriage, but I should be 
afraid the first acid drop in life's cup after mar- 
riage would spoil the illusion and forever dim 
the sparkle. The apostle's rule for testing faith 
applies equally well to faith's twin virtue, love ; 
show me thy love without thy works, and I will 
show thee my love by my works. 

Let me whisper this word in your ear, my 
young friends : The sensible young man, the one 
who will make a good husband, thinks a great 
deal more than you are apt to suppose of good- 
nature and sweetness of disposition, and these, 
when genuine, are only the habitual expression 
of love. 

" How does she treat her mother ? " " How 



164 THE QUEEN ON HER THRONE. 

does she speak to her little brothers and sisters ? " 
" How does she treat even the dumb dog and 
kitten on the hearth-rug ? " Those are ques- 
tions which he asks himself about you, if he is 
wise, and he is always answering them as he 
sees how you live. 

You think he admires only the pink cheek 
and sparkling eye and the lithe figure and the 
new gown and brave bonnet, but I tell you, the 
young man is not quite such a simpleton, after 
all. He knows that a pink cheek, pretty as it 
is to look at, may become very unlovely when 
flushed with pettishness or anger, and that out 
of cherry lips may come most rasping and irri- 
tating chatter, that may make his whole life 
miserable. This young man often has a good 
deal more sense than you give him credit for ; 
and gentle, lovable, equable good-nature are 
qualities which make the homeliest face and 
figure beautiful. 

I have recently read in some newspaper, that 



THE QUEEN ON HER THRONE. 165 

a traveler in Norway, a short time ago, came to 
a village early one morning, and was struck by 
the air of gloom which pervaded the streets. 
Unable to speak a word of the language, he 
could not ask the cause of this, and concluded 
that some sickness or financial trouble had fallen 
upon the community. As the day wore on to- 
ward noon, however, the houses were closed; 
shop-windows were covered ; all trade and busi- 
ness ceased. "It is death, then," he said to 
himself. Presently he saw the people gathering 
for the funeral. There were the village official, 
the nobleman from the neighboring chateau, 
and apparently every man, woman and child in 
the village. It must be some dignitary of the 
church who is dead, or some county official. 
As be stood watching the crowds passing down 
a little rocky street, he caught sight of the face 
of a Frenchman known to him. He beckoned 
him to him. " The town has lost some great 
magnate apparently?" " Ah, no ! It is only a 



166 THE QUEEN ON HER THRONE. 

maiden who is dead. No, she was not rich or 
beautiful. But, oh ! such a pleasant girl, mon- 
sieur. All the world seems darker now that 
she is gone." Was not that a funeral fit for a 
queen ? 

" I would give nothing for that man's religion 
whose very dog and cat were not the better for 
it," says Rowland Hill. I would give little for 
those womanly graces and attractions which did 
not make happier those within their influence. 

It requires a vast amount of sweetness to 
make the bitter cup of life tolerable, and mere 
beauty and outward grace cannot accomplish 
much in this direction, any more than an ex- 
quisite cup of wedgewood can make tolerable 
the bitter wormwood it contains. You have all 
heard of the two bears which the wise minister 
advised the newly married couple to keep con- 
stantly in their home, bear and for-bear. There 
are others besides newly married couples that 
need to keep these same bears in the home. 



THE QUEEN ON HER THRONE. 167 

M If you are a Baptist and your wife is a 
Pedobaptist," says Dr. Talmage, " don't go to 
splashing water in each other's faces ! If you 
are a Presbyterian and your husband is a Metho- 
dist, when he shouts ; Hallelujah' don't get ner- 
vous." And then he appropriately quotes Cow- 
per's stanza : 

" The kindest and the happiest pair 
Will find occasion to forbear ; 
And something every clay they live, 
To pity and perhaps forgive. " 

That a man married to a woman who never 
consults his comfort and taste, and who does 
not keep herself as attractive after marriage as 
before marriage, that such a man does not stay 
at home from the club, he goes on to say, is no 
wonder. " It is a wonder that such a man does 
not go on a whaling voyage of three years, in a 
leaky ship." 

The queen's robe on state occasions is made 



168 THE QUEEN ON HER THRONE. 

of or trimmed with ermine, which is regarded 
as emblematic of purity. Let a character of 
spotless purity and holiness clothe you as with 
a garment as you wield the scepter of love on 
the throne of home. 

" Reverence and love for the character and 
Word of God, with earnest faith, that will give 
courage to obey and patient continuance to 
well-doing," is what you need, writes one of 
your friends. 

" I think the danger with young people," 

writes another, "is in being conformed to the 

things of the world ; having a fear of being 

strict and singular, they yield too quickly to the 

world's opinion, thus losing the power for good 

which they might exert were they firm in their 

determination to do right, whatever the world 

may say." 

I have scores of just such messages for you 

from loving hearts that have seen clear into 

the core of this matter. 



THE QUEEN ON HER THRONE. 169 

As it is the queen's prerogative to wear the 
ermine, so it is yours to be clothed with these 
Christian graces — humility, modesty, purity ; 
they will make any face and figure attractive 
and lovable, and as you go through life, though 
you may apparently attract very little attention, 
yet all true men and women, as they see you, 
will say to themselves in their inmost hearts, 
" There is a queen, and she is clothed in right 
royal apparel." 

Again, make your kingdom as wide as pos- 
sible. Queen Victoria does not rule over one 
little island alone. Canada, Australia, India 
and much of Africa acknowledge her sway. 

The influences of a good home can never be 
confined within four walls. If you are a true 
queen, however humble you may account your- 
self, a thousand unconscious subjects will be 
blessed by your rule. The Queen of England 
has never seen one in a thousand of her people, 
but there is not one of them all who is not 



170 THE QUEEN ON HER THRONE. 

better and happier because a pure, noble woman 
sits upon the throne. You can selfishly use the 
best blessings that God ever conferred upon 
men, and you can use your home, even, for 
your own selfish gratification, making of it a 
social and exclusive club for two or three or 
half a dozen, and never thinking of the wide 
realm which it is your duty to bless. It is 
necessary to have a central tie somewhere, to be 
sure ; to have a throne somewhere ; some one 
home from which these good influences ema- 
nate ; but it is no more possible for the true 
queen of a home to keep altogether within her 
own four walls than it is for the sun to shine all 
to itself, without distributing its light and 
warmth to half a score of distant planets. 

" You cannot always sit on your husband's 
knee," says your good friend, Titcomb, " for in 
the first place it would tire him, and in the 
second place he would get sick of it. . . . 
I am acquainted with too many husbands and 



THE QUEEN- ON HER THRONE. 171 

wives who, though all the world to each other, 
are nothing to the world. They gather com- 
forts about them, they bear dainties to each 
other's lips, they live and move and have their 
whole being in each other's love, and, shutting 
out all the world, live only for themselves. It 
is not unjust to say that this is one of the most 
dangerous and most repulsive forms of home 
life. It is selfishness, doubled, associated, in- 
stituted ; and it deserves serious treatment." 

Many a lovely queen needs to take these 
words to heart and enlarge her realm, not by 
dangling for lovers and seeking to bind a throng 
of personal admirers to her conquering chariot 
wheels, but by letting the sweet home influences 
of which she is the center stream out into the 
chilly atmosphere of the world, upon the crowd 
of homeless ones around her. You who have 
beautiful homes, where plenty reigns and love 
decks every hour with flowers, remember the 
throng of homeless young men and women who 



172 THE QUEEN ON HER THRONE. 

walk our streets, and to whom a glimpse of such 
a home as yours would be a glimpse of heaven 
itself. 

You can be as selfish with the comforts of 
your home as the veriest miser counting his 
gold. At the bar of God you will have to ac- 
count for this talent — the art of home-making 
— and for making the sweet radiance of that 
home shine the furthest in this naughty world. 

We have talked about woman's throne, her 
scepter, her ermine, her wide kingdom — I need 
hardly remind you that there is a crown for her 
too. It does not visibly sparkle upon her brow, 
it cannot be weighed in a jeweler's scales, but 
it is no less real than Queen Victoria's, because 
less tangible than hers. 

To every one of you, with your rare and 
blessed opportunities to brighten and sweeten 
and gladden the world through the homes of 
which God has made you queens, to every one 
of you come the solemn words of the Son of 



THE QUEEN ON HER THRONE. 173 

God : " Be thou faithful unto death, and I will 
give thee a crown of life." " Hold that fast 
that thou hast, that no man take thy crown." 

There is no cheap and easy process for turn- 
ing out queenly characters, as clothes-pins are 
made by the gross. The loving friend, the 
helpful daughter, the patient sister, the good- 
natured, peace-loving schoolgirl, makes the 
queenly home-maker, and such a one, whether 
married or single, always finds her throne. 

" The earth waits for her queen." God calls 
for queenly characters. Answer this demand ; 
humanity needs you, young women. Respond 
to this call, for you can do much to prove to 
the world that — 

" There are two heavens, 
Both made of love — one inconceivable 
Even by the other, so divine it is ; 
The other far on this side the stars, 
By men called Home." 



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tier verse was the natural outcome of brought very near to a Christian woman's 

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BABYLAND. 

BOUND VOLUMES. Edited by Charles Stuart Pratt and 

Ella Farman Pratt. Square 8vo, boards, each .75; cloth, 1.00. 

This is the one magazine in the world that combines the best amusement for babies 
and the best help for mothers. Dainty stories, tender poems, gay jingles, pictures 
beautiful ; pictures funny. Large type, heavy paper, pretty cover. 50 cents a year. 



" The publishers, from long experi- 
ence, have come to understand pretty 
accurately what the babies like to look 
at in the way of pictures, and what they 
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stories. And that is why Babyland is 
what it is, and why it appeals so strongly 
to little eyes and little ears." — Boston 
Transcript. 

11 A handsome illustrated book. The 
illustrations are as artistic as if made for 
older and more critical readers. We have 



got away from the old idea that anvthing 
is good enough for children and now 
demand for them the best in art and 
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Inter-Ocean. 

" It is filled with good things that will 
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— Philadelphia Star. 

** What a help and blessing for the 
tired mother." — Farm, Field and Stock- 
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BAINBRIDGE (Lucy S.). 

ROUND THE WORLD LETTERS. i2mo, illustrated, 

1.50. 

" Mrs. Bainbridge's work is a book 
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serious or gay. The reader will never 
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such is the charm of her style every 
reader is fascinated. The book is a bril- 
liant photograph of the experiences and 
observations of an intelligent woman in 
such a variety of scenes as such a tour as 



she made implies. The writer is a keen 
observer, and has had exceptional facili- 
ties for intelligent observation. The 
reader will feel that he has gained a won- 
derfully clear notion of the whole living 
and breathing world, while yet he has 
been fascinated and entertained as few 
romances could do it." — The Watch- 
man. 



BAINBRIDGE (W. P.). 

AROUND THE WORLD TOUR OF 
MISSIONS. 8vo, illustrated with maps, 2.00. 



CHRISTIAN 



" A universal survey of home and 
foreign evangelization, compiled from 
personal study upon the field of many 
lands and from conference with over a 
thousand missionaries. Several maps 
locate all leading mission stations of all 



denominations of all Protestant lands. 
. . . No work in this line, so com- 
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— Golden Rule, Boston. 



SELF-GIVING. i2mo, illustrated, 1.50. 

A story of Christian missions. 
The growth of missionary spirit, the 



strength of character by overcoming diffi- 
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missionaries, in self-seeking secretaries, 
in adventurers under cloak of missionary 
zeal, in the meanness of gifts and inap- 
preciation nf rhe work " — Our Church' 
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DAVIS (M. E. M.). 

IN WAR-TIMES AT LA ROSE BLANCHE. i2mo, 

illustrations by Kemble, 1.25. 

" ' In War-Times at La Rose Blanche,' the pathos so appealing, though never 
by M % E. M. Davis, is one of those insistent, that the book is almost perfeo 
charming books so naturally written that tion." — Boston Advertiser. 
the reader feels as if he himself had lived " The really good book of Souther? 
its scenes, had heard the little 4 Gunnel's war stories for children waited until it 
vally' ask, ' Marse Jim, has you seen appeared in the shape of * In War-Times.* 
marster?' had watched the fortunes of It is all there; it is all in the little book 
the dish-rag bonnet, had seen the four with its twelve stories, some gay and 
lads with their bran-new uniforms start some sad, and its delightful tale of doll- 
proudly off for the War, and seen them housekeeping, and if there be any child, 
thin and ragged return to feast off ' po' or, indeed, any older reader who will not 
souls.' It has always seemed to us that cry over the ' Gunnel's Vally ' let North, 
a book like this, with its sketchy tender and South both reject him. ' 'Twas a 
touches here and there of humor, joy and long, long time on de way ' but ' La Rose 
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— Critic, N. Y. the children is here and that the Southern 

" The whole book in its truth and ten-" side of the war story is going to be writ- 

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a morning-glory growing on a soldier- '/The most charming description of 

boy's grave." — New York Nation. child-life in the South that has yet been 

"The author writes with a graceful published." — Golden Rule. 

pen, with a sweet, half-humorous sim- " Full of quaint negro dialect of which 

plicity and lightness of touch that makes Mrs. Davis is master." — New Orleans 

the work a constant delight. And the Picayune, 
feeling is so true, the humor so bright, 

DAWES (Anna Laurens). 

HOW WE ARE GOVERNED. i2mo, 1.50. 

The object of this useful work is fully explained by the title; the constitution is 

given in full, and then each clause is taken up separately and explained in such a clear, 
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reading it. 

" Her description is admirably clear, her style reminds us of that of Mr. Nord- 

lucid and intelligible. She has that pecu- hoff or of the late Jacob Abbott." — 

liar power of clear-cut statement which, Christian Union. 

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pen or sits in the professor's chair, is the plains the workings of our system more 
first and fundamental, as it is the rarest, intelligently and impartially than this." 
qualification for success. In this respect Cincinnati Commercial Gazette. 

THE MODERN JEW : His Present and Future. i6mo 
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DAWES (Mrs. S. E.). 

ETHEL'S YEAR AT ASHTON. i2mo, illustrated, 1.25. 

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vivacity and vigor which are necessary for aims, is developed with much good taste 

an interesting story, and pervaded with and feeling. A literary club and other 

true Christian love that gives it value. A means of improvement make a new place 

young girl comes into a farmer's family, . of the little country village. Besides the 

provided only with the motto, ' Seek daily incidents told naturally and vividly, the 

opportunities of doing good,' and a sweet story contains many well-drawn charac- 

aff eetionate nature to carry out the motto. ters. " — Boston Journal, 
Her influence upon a narrow household, 



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FAITH AND ACTION. 

Selections from the writings of F. D. Maurice. With preface by 
Rev. Phillips Brooks, D. D. i2mo, i.oo. 

Few English clergymen are better known in this country than Frederic D. Maurice, 
whose untimely death, some years ago, deprived not only England,, but the Christian 
world, of one of its ablest religious teachers. He devoted a great deal of his time to 
the social and religious needs of the common people. 

Maurice was a dear friend of Tennyson. The following lines in one of the poet's 
beft-known pieces /eier to his friend : 

" How best to help the slender store, 
How mend the dwellings of the poor, 
How gain in life as life advances, 
Valor and charity more and more. " 

FARMAN (Ella). (Mrs. C. S. Pratt.) 

Ella Farman is the editor of Wide Awake, and her books are full of sympathy with 
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unexpected causes for happiness and gladness. 

THE COOKING-CLUB OF TU-WHIT HOLLOW. 

I2mo, illustrated, 1.25. 

The practical instructions in housewifery, which are abundant, are set in the midst 
of a bright wholesome story. Girls who read this book will not be able to keep house 
at once, but they will learn to do some things, and they will have an hour or two of 
genuine pleasure in discovering how there came to be a cooking-club and in tracing its 
history. 

GOOD-FOR-NOTHING POLLY. i2mo, illustrated, 1.00. 

Polly is not a girl at all, but a boy, a slangy, school-hating, fun-lov'ng, wilful, big- 
ftearted boy. •" Nagged " continually at home, he wastes his time upon the streets and 
finally runs away. The book tells of his adventures. Mrs. Pratt has a keen insight 
into the joys and sorrows of the little appreciated boy-life. Like Robert J. Burdette, 
she is a master of humor and often touches a tender chord of pathos. Every boy will 
he delighted with this book and every mother ought to read it who is, all unwittingly 
.perhaps, "freezing " her own noisy boy out of the home. 

"' Good-f or- Nothing Polly 'will doubt- England as it has already done in the 
Jess gam the admiration and win the United States." — Bookseller, London, 
graces of as large a circle of readers in 

HOW TWO GIRLS TRIED FARMING. i2mo, illustrated, 

I.oo. 

A narrative of an actual experience. 

" The two girls who tried farming pigs and chickens, and as they do every- 
solved a problem by taking the bull by thing to the best of their ability, their 
the horns, and that is often as effectual a products are in constant demand." — St. 
means as can be resorted to. They had Louis Post Despatch. 
for capital one thousand dollars. With "We recommend it to those girls who 
this they bought thirty-five acres of are wearing out their lives at the sewing- 
scraggy farm land. Then they hired out machine, behind counters or even at the 
as lady help for the winter and laid by teacher's desk." — JVeTV York Herald. 
enough money to buy clover seed, and a " The success of the farm is almost 
horse and a few other necessities. Dolly surpassed by the charm of the record, 
had learned to plough and harrow and It shows a touch of refinement and a 
make hay, and even to cut wood. Both degree of literary skill no less uncommon 
girls worked hard and it is pleasant to than the enterprise which has converted 
ehronicle their success. Now they have a bleak hill-top of Michigan into a smil- 
a prosperous farm, and raise cows, sheep, ing garden." — New York Tribune. 



D. LOTHROP COMPANY'S 



ALLEN (Willis Boyd). 

PINE CONES. i2mo. illustrated, i.oo. 



" Pine Cones sketches the adventures 
of a dozen wide-awake boys and girls in 
the woods, along the streams and over 
the mountains. It is good, wholesome 
reading that will make boys nobler and 
girls gentler. It has nothing of the over- 
goody flavor, but they are simply honest, 
live, healthy young folks, with warm 
blood in their veins and good impulses 
in their hearts, and are out for a good 



time. It will make old blood run warmer 
and revive old times to hear them whoop 
and see them scamper. No man or 
woman has a right to grow too old to 
enjoy seeing the young enjoy the spring 
days of life. It is a breezy, joyous, en- 
tertaining book, and we commend it to 
our young readers." — Chicago Inter- 
Ocean. 



SILVER RAGS. i2ino, illustrated, i.oo. 



" Silver Rags is a continuation of 
Pine Cones and is quite as delightful 
reading as its predecessor. The story 
describes a jolly vacation in Maine, and 
the sayings and doings of the city boys 
and girls are varied by short stories, sup- 
posed to be told by a good-natured ' Uncle 
Will.' " — The Watchman, Boston. 



" Mr. Willis Boyd Allen is one of our 
finest writers of juvenile fiction. There 
is an open frankness in Mr. Allen's 
characters which render them quite as 
novel as they are interesting, and his 
simplicity of style makes the whole story 
as fresh and breezy as the pine woods 
themselves." — Boston Herald, 



THE NORTHERN CROSS. i2mo, illustrated, i.oo. 



" The Northern Cross, a story of the 
Boston Latin School by Willis Boyd 
Allen, is a capital book for boys. Be- 
ginning with a drill upon Boston Com- 
mon, the book continues with many inci- 
dents of school life. There are recita- 
tions, with their successes and failures, 
drills and exhibitions. Over all is Dr. 
Francis Gardner, the stern, eccentric, 
warm-hearted Head Master, whom once 
to meet was to remember forever! The 



idea of the Northern Cross for young 
crusaders gives an imaginary tinge to the 
healthy realism. " — Boston Journal. 

" Mr. Willis Boyd Allen appeals to a 
large audience when he tells a story of 
the Boston Latin School in the last year 
of Master Gardner's life. And even o 
those who never had the privilege of 
studying there the story is pleasant and 
lively." —Boston Post. 



KELP : A Story of the Isle of Shoals. i2mo, illustrated, i.oo. 

This is the latest of the Pine Cone Series and introduces the same characters. Their 
adventures are now on a lonely little island, one of the Shoals, where they camp out 
and have a glorious time not unmarked by certain perilous episodes which heighten 
the interest of the story. It is really the best of a series of which all are delightful 
reading for young people. 

" It is a healthful, clean, bright book, fully through the veins of young read- 
which will make the blood course health- ers." — Chicago Inter -Ocean. 

ANAGNOS (Julia R.). 

PHILOSOPHISE QU^SSTOR; or, Days at Concord. i2mo, 
60 cents. 

In this unique book, Mrs. Julia R. Anagnos, one of the accomplished daughters of 
Julia Ward Howe, presents, under cover of a pleasing narrative, a sketch of the 
Emerson session of the Concord School of Philosophy. It has for its frontispiece an 
excellent picture of the building occupied by this renowned school. 



" The seeker of philosophical truth, 
who is described as the shadowy figure of 
a young girl, is throughout very expres- 
sive of desire and appreciation. The im- 
pressions she receives are those to which 
such a condition are most sensitive — the 
higher and more refined ones — and the 
responsive thoughts concern the nature 
and character of what is heard or felt. 
Mrs. Anagnos has written a prose poem, 



in which the last two sessions of the 
Concord School of Philosophy, which 
include that in memory of Emerson, and 
its lecturers excite her feelings and inspire 
her thought. It is sung in lofty strains 
that resemble those of the sacred woods 
and fount, and themselves are communi- 
cative of their spirit. It will be welcomed 
as an appropriate souvenir." — Boston 
Globe. 



SELECT LIST OF BOOKS. 



BATES (Clara Do:y). 

JESOP'S FABLES (Versified). With 72 full-page illustrations 
by Garrett, Lungren, Sweeney, Barnes and Hassam. Quarto 

cloth, 1.50. (4) 

"Mrs. Bates has turned the wit and awake young people." — Boston Journal. 
wisdom in a dozen ot </Esop's Fables " The illustrations introduce all classes 

into jolly rhythmical narratives, whose of subjects, and are original and superior 

good humor will be appreciated by wide- work." — Boston Globe. 

BLIND JAKEY. Illustrated, i6mo, .50. (5) 

HEART'S CONTENT. i2mo, 1.25. 

See Child Lore (Clara Doty Bates, editor). 



BATES (Katherine Lee). 

SUNSHINE. Oblong 321110, illustrated by W. L. Taylor, .50. 

A little poem, in which the wild flowers and sunshine play their part in driving 
away the bad temper of a little lass who had hidden away in the grass in a fit of sulks. 

SANTA CLAUS RIDDLE. A Poem. Square i2mo, illus- 
trated in colors, paper, .35. 

See Wedding- Day Book (Katherine Lee Bates editor). 
BEDSIDE POETRY. 

Edited by Wendell P. Garrison. i6mo, plain cloth, .75; fancy 

cloth, 1. 00. 

This collection is for the home, and for a particular season. " Few fathers and 
mothers," says Mr. Garrison, "appreciate the peculiar value of the bedtime hour for 
confirming filial and parental affection, and for conveying reproof to ears never so 
attentive or resistlesss. Words said then sink deep, and the reading of poetry of a 
high moral tone and, at the same time, of an attractive character, is apt to plant seed 
which will bear good fruit in the future." 

" There is seldom a compilation of Emerson and Cowper, Wordsworth, 
verse at once so wisely limited and so Leigh Hunt, Shelley, Southey, Coler- 
well extended, so choice in character and idge, William Blake, Burns, Thackeray, 
so fine in quality as Bedside Poetry, edi- Lowell, Tennyson, Shakespeare, Mrs. 
ted by Wendell P. Garrison. He has Hemans, Mrs. Kemble, Holmes, Whit- 
chosen four-score pieces ' of a rather high tier and Arthur Hugh Clough. We find 
order, the remembrance of which will be cheer and courage, truth and fortitude, 
a joy forever and a potent factor in the purity and humor, and all the great posi- 
formation not merely of character but of tive virtues, put convincingly in these 
literary taste.' Therefore he has given selections." — Springfield Republican. 



BELL (Mrs. Lucia Chase). 

TRUE BLUE. i2mo, 10 illustrations by Merrill, 1.25. (5) 

The scene is laid in the far West, and the incidents are such as could only occur in 
a newly developed country, where even children are taught to depend upon themselves. 

"Doe, the warm-hearted, impulsive copying by those who read her adven- 
heroine of the story, is an original char- tures and experiences." — Detroit P-os* 
acter, and one whose ways are well worth 



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